


And If You're Gone Tomorrow (What Was Ours, Still Will Be)

by exalteddm



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-16 13:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21508615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exalteddm/pseuds/exalteddm
Summary: Okay, so. It's not his best first impression, but it is two in the morning and Callum thinks that gives him some leeway in the whole social interaction department. - In which Rayla is an exchange student from Glasgow, and Callum finds himself wishing that life wasn't so temporary. AU, one-shot.
Relationships: Callum/Rayla (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 44
Kudos: 308





	And If You're Gone Tomorrow (What Was Ours, Still Will Be)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Alan Menken's "Something to Believe In" (from Newsies)

“Hey, nice to meet you. I’m Callum, what’s your—whoa, wait a minute, you have an accent!”

The girl in front of Callum gives him an exasperated roll of her eyes, and he kicks himself mentally. “Everyone’s got an accent, dummy,” she says. “Mine is just one you’re not used to yet.”

Okay, so. It’s not his _best_ first impression, but it is two in the morning and he thinks that gives him some leeway in the whole social interaction department. The girl—Rayla, he thinks her name is, but he’s not sure he caught it properly—pays him no more attention and starts up a conversation with Claudia, who unfortunately is barely more coherent than Callum at this point. The two of them trail behind him as he leads the way out of the airport terminal and toward his car.

Callum really doesn’t want to be here, is the thing. Rayla is _Claudia’s_ exchange student, not his, and driving her out here means that he’s going to get maybe four hours of sleep the night before his SAT, but. Viren and Soren are apparently away on some sort of business trip, and these days Callum can’t seem to say no whenever Claudia asks him for something. It’s not just that she’s one of his best friends, but also . . . he might be nursing a minor crush. It’s a bit of a problem.

He realizes that he could have just let her borrow his car—she can drive just as well as he can—but realistically, there’s no way in _hell_ he’s going to let anyone other than himself behind the wheel of Zym, so. Here he is.

(Yes, Callum is aware that Zym is a ridiculous name for a car. No, he’s not changing it, because Ezran picked it out and his brother would be crushed if Callum even considered such a thing. Besides, it’s kind of cute. Just a little bit.)

Claudia falls asleep as he’s pulling onto the highway, leaving the car in a state of awkward silence aside from her occasional snoring. He’d put on some music, but he’s pretty sure he left his phone behind in his efforts to sneak out of the house without his stepfather noticing. He hopes it’s in his room and not somewhere deeply incriminating, like on the shelf where they keep the car keys.

Callum frowns. It’s almost definitely on the shelf where they keep the car keys.

“Hey,” he says to Rayla, “you can sleep too, you know. You must be tired.” She’s been staring out the window ever since Claudia passed out, tense and alert, like she’s being hunted or something. It’s starting to unnerve him a little.

“I slept on the airplane,” she says, turning away from the window. “Anyway, it’s practically morning where I’m from. I’ll be fine.”

Curious, he asks, “Where _are_ you from, anyway? I mean, Scotland, obviously, what with your accent and all, but like. Where in Scotland?”

“I’m from Glasgow,” Rayla replies, “or close enough. Nothing exciting or anything.”

Which, well, she’s wrong there. Callum nearly whips around in excitement, before remembering that he’s driving and it would be a really bad idea to turn away from the highway in front of him. Glancing into the mirror to talk to her is already bad enough. “Oh my God,” breathes, “you’re from Glasgow. An actual person. From actual Glasgow.”

He probably deserves the unsettled look she’s giving him, but he’s too excited to care. “And?” she says slowly. “What of it?”

“Sorry, I just.” He clears his throat. “Glasgow School of Art. It’s sort of maybe my dream school? I don’t know, it’s kind of ridiculous, I doubt I could even get in, but—I never thought I’d meet someone from Glasgow. Unless I went there myself, I mean, then obviously I’d meet people—”

Rayla cuts him off with a laugh, and he realizes that he’s rambling. “Glasgow School of Art,” she muses. “It is sort of famous, I suppose.”

It isn’t, not really, but he stumbled across it once during a school project on art history and he’s been in love ever since. Coupled with his ridiculous crush on Claudia, Callum is a little worried he might have a thing for the practically-unattainable. Or maybe he just enjoys causing himself pain. Whatever.

“I know it’s not famous, you don’t have to patronize me.” Callum risks a sheepish glance into the rearview mirror—Rayla looks far more amused than she has any right to be. “I just think I’d like it there,” he says, suddenly unsure of himself.

“You’re an artist, then.” It’s a statement, not a question, but Callum nods anyway. When he doesn’t say anything, she adds, with a completely straight face, “An actual artist. Who makes actual art.”

It takes Callum a moment to realize she’s making fun of him. “Hey,” he grumbles, though it’s difficult to sound irritated when he’s on the brink of laughing. “I was a little starstruck, okay? You don’t need to attack me like this.”

At that, she does burst out laughing. “Starstruck,” she snickers. “You meet one person from Glasgow and you’re already starstruck. Lord help you if you actually make it into that school of theirs.”

Callum raises a feeble protest, but he’s laughing along with her and he doesn’t think it’s very effective. He gets Rayla off the topic eventually, asking her questions about life in Glasgow and answering hers about his hometown of Middle-Of-Nowhere, Connecticut (as Ezran calls it, anyway). Honestly, he’s a little surprised that she doesn’t already know more—Claudia’s been in contact with her for a few months now, by his estimation. But maybe they just never talked about this sort of thing.

He’s happy to tell her everything, anyway, from his and Ezran’s various little escapades to the way Claudia and Soren almost burned down the high school last year. Rayla repays him with stories of the Scottish landscape and the beauty of its wilderness—apparently she loves hiking, and it’s one of the many things she and her adoptive father, Runaan, have in common. Callum can tell that there’s something off about their relationship—her voice seizes when she mentions him, and she makes sure to steer the conversation well away from the topic as soon as she can—but he doesn’t press. He knows how it is sometimes, with parents.

By the time he’s dropping them off at home and she’s shaking Claudia awake in the backseat, Callum is exhausted. It’s nearly three in the morning (he has an SAT tomorrow, he remembers abruptly), and all he wants to do is sleep. Claudia mumbles a bleary “thank you” as she stumbles inside, which he waves off. He helps Rayla unload her baggage and makes sure they’re both safely inside the house before leaving for home.

He falls asleep without bothering to change into pajamas, the moment his head hits the pillow.

* * *

“Callum.”

_What in the world does he want? It’s far too early for this._

“Callum.”

“Leave me alone, Ez, I’m sleeping.”

“ _Callum_.”

Groaning, Callum sits up and tosses his sheets away from himself. Ezran is standing at the foot of his bed, holding . . . is that Callum’s phone? “Ez, what are you doing in here?”

“I was sneaking into the kitchen to see if we had any jelly tarts left,” his brother informs him with a grin, “but I found your phone on the table and the alarm was going off. I thought you might want to know.”

 _Crap_. Callum casts about wildly on his nightstand for his watch and grabs it, sighing with relief when he sees that it’s barely five minutes past seven. He can still make it. “Yeah,” he says blearily, “yeah, I’ve got a test today, I can’t believe I . . .” He stumbles out of bed and takes his phone from Ezran’s proffered hand. “Thanks, Ez.”

Callum tosses his lucky scarf over his shoulder and makes for the door—no time to shower, he’s cutting it close enough as is—but Ezran’s voice stops him. “You didn’t sneak out again last night, did you?”

Leaving one hand on the doorknob, Callum turns and sighs. “Claudia had her exchange student coming in, okay?” he says. “She just needed a ride to the airport.”

“You can’t keep doing this, Callum,” Ezran protests. “You’re gone so often now, and Dad’s going to find out. What are you doing that’s so important, anyway?”

“Harrow doesn’t care where I go,” Callum snaps, but he knows that’s a lie. Harrow does care, it’s just . . . Callum needs his alone time. He’ll sort through all of these emotions eventually, he promises himself. Just not right now. “And what I’m doing is my own business.”

If he’s being honest with himself, he could probably just tell Ezran what he’s up to. There’s nothing _wrong_ with renting a room at the Xadia art studio downtown, especially when he’s only putting it to its intended purpose and nothing else, but what he doesn’t want to face is the _why_. Doesn’t want to explain the reasons he’s uncomfortable practicing his art inside the too-thick walls of the family mansion, the reasons he and Harrow have been studiously avoiding each other for the past few months.

Ezran’s young. Harrow’s his birth father, so he doesn’t have anything to worry about. He’s the one who belongs here.

But he knows that all Ezran wants is for Callum to think he belongs here, too.

“I’m sorry, Ez,” he sighs. “I’m just a little stressed right now, and I have a test to get to, and I—here, how about this. I’m busy this weekend, and Harrow’s going to notice if _both_ of us try to sneak out, but next Saturday I’ll take you out and show you what I’ve been up to. How does that sound?”

Ezran looks up at him hopefully, and Callum’s heart twists. He’s going to have to get his thoughts sorted before Saturday, because there’s no way he can go back on this offer now. “Promise?”

“Yeah,” Callum says easily. “Promise.”

And then he’s out the door, on his way to the SAT that he really should have studied a bit more for.

* * *

The test, surprisingly, doesn’t go _terribly_ , though that may be his sleep-deprived impression of it attempting to fake him out. He’ll find out in a month, regardless.

He doesn’t feel like heading home afterward, so he winds his scarf around his neck (it’s still chilly this year, even in early April) and decides to wander the school grounds for a while. Katolis isn’t exactly the prettiest of the private schools he’s known—it’s seen better days, for sure—but Callum thinks sixty or seventy years ago, it might have been. The architecture is all very impressive, if a little pretentious, but it feels a bit . . . worn out, somehow. Like it’s longing for something.

 _That’s ridiculous, Callum_ , he tells himself. _Buildings can’t long for things. Buildings don’t even have feelings_.

Even so, when he pulls out his sketchbook to make a ten-minute sketch of the Sciences wing, he calls it “The Lonely Stones” and the name just seems to fit. The cloud-gray sky behind the building’s roof, which he struggles a little to capture with his single No. 2 pencil (stupid standardized testing guidelines), certainly doesn’t help his mood. Neither does the chilly breeze that ruffles his papers as he draws. Rain is in the air today.

He’s just finished his sketch and is trying to stuff his sketchbook back into his bag when he hears footsteps along the walkway. Footsteps and voices, chatting idly, and he’s barely worked out who they belong to when Claudia and Rayla round the corner and catch sight of him sitting on the bench.

“Callum!” Claudia grins. “I didn’t expect to see you today. What are you doing here?”

“Just finished the SAT,” he says, giving her the generally-accepted face for _standardized testing is the absolute worst_. “Hey, Rayla.”

“Ah, the SAT,” Claudia muses with a fake fondness. “I’m sure glad I never have to take anything like that again. Don’t worry, Callum, I’m sure you did brilliantly.”

“Easy for you to say,” he replies. “What did you get on yours, again? Something high enough that RIT was practically _begging_ you to come to New York?”

Claudia blushes and rolls her eyes, but Callum knows she’s secretly proud. She’s one of the most brilliant people he’s ever met (someone has to have inherited Viren’s intelligence, after all, and as lovely as Soren is it certainly isn’t him). If anyone deserves to get into some fancy tech school in New York, it’s her.

“Anyway, I’m showing Rayla around campus,” Claudia says in an obvious attempt to change the subject. Callum lets it slide. “Want to join us? I don’t really spend a lot of time . . .”

“. . . outside the laboratories?” Callum finishes for her. “Yeah, I know. You practically live in that building.”

“Well, don’t start making me sound all antisocial,” Claudia laughs. “I will miss the place, though. I can’t believe senior year is almost over.”

Callum slings his bag over his shoulder and stands. “Speak for yourself. Mine hasn’t even started yet.” He’s about to ask where they’re headed when his phone starts to buzz in his pocket. A quick glance confirms that it’s Harrow, so he sends an apologetic glance to Claudia and Rayla and picks up.

“Callum,” says his stepfather.

“Harrow.”

He can almost feel the wince through the line. “I was just wondering when you’d be home tonight,” Harrow says. “For dinner. Is your test over?”

“Yeah, it’s done, I think it was fine.” His skin is crawling and he wants nothing more than to hang up the phone, but Harrow is just trying to make sure he’s okay. He owes him a conversation, at least. “I’m at the school with Claudia, we’re giving her exchange student a tour. But I’ll be home in a few hours.”

“Claudia, eh?” Harrow asks, and Callum groans. _It’s just a stupid crush_ , he thinks, _a stupid one-sided crush, and she’s leaving in the fall anyway. It wouldn’t work out._ There are more reasons that that, of course, but her impending departure for college is something concrete. Something Callum can use that doesn’t involve admitting that there are faults in either of them. “Say, isn’t Viren out of town right now? He’s in Montauk for the weekend.”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, he is.” _Please don’t ask how Rayla got here, please don’t ask how Rayla got here . . ._

“How would Claudia and her exchange student like to come over for dinner tonight?” Harrow asks, and Callum nearly collapses with relief. “I know Claudia doesn’t enjoy cooking.”

“Her name’s Rayla,” Callum says, “the exchange student, I mean.” She glances over at him when he says her name, so he covers the microphone and adds, “Harrow wants to know if you two want to come over for dinner. Mainly so Claudia here doesn’t have to cook if she doesn’t want to.”

“Oh, thank God,” Claudia sighs, prompting a laugh from Rayla. “Yes, please.”

“I’d be happy to join you all,” says Rayla. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that brother of yours, Callum. I do want to meet him.”

Callum grins at her, the story of Ezran’s early-morning escapade already on his lips, before remembering his stepfather is still on the line. “Yeah, they’d love to,” he says into the phone. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“See you tonight,” Harrow says with a sigh. Callum knows he has more questions for him, but he’ll let Harrow ask them at dinner. God knows they’ll need _some_ sort of conversation if they have guests over. “Bye, Callum.”

Callum grits out a “bye” hangs up the phone before walking back to where Claudia and Rayla are waiting for him.

He’s a decent tour guide for Katolis, he finds—he’s drawn enough of the buildings to be able to talk about the interesting ones, like the set of English classrooms that burned down in the sixties and weren’t rebuilt until a few years later (the woodwork was a little off, he’d noticed, and a few inquiries into the school records had shown him exactly why). Claudia is happy to let him take the lead, trying to rein him in whenever he goes off on too much of a tangent, and Rayla seems content to sit back and listen.

It’s a good afternoon, even if the sky does open up after less than an hour and they’re forced to flee back to Zym for shelter. His is the only car in the parking lot, but it doesn’t feel lonely as he pulls onto the road and glances back to see it empty. Callum drives off, and he wonders what it is about the lot that makes it different from the old Sciences building.

* * *

Dinner isn’t ready by the time Callum steps cautiously into the house, which is fine by him. He goes looking for Ezran instead, but he has to stop and turn back when he realizes that Rayla and Claudia aren’t with him.

“Callum,” Rayla says from the entrance foyer. She’s staring at one of the paintings on the wall—it’s not one of his; none of his art is up on display in the house, but it makes him feel self-conscious regardless. “Um. This is . . . a really nice place.”

Callum winces. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it’s really nice. Really . . . aesthetically pleasing.”

Luckily, Claudia comes to his rescue. “It’s their family home,” she tells Rayla, and Callum is infinitely thankful that she chose _home_ instead of _mansion_. “Been in their line for generations, or something. None of them are really happy about it, but it’s not like their dad can just, like, pawn it off.”

 _Stepdad_ , Callum thinks instinctively, but he doesn’t voice the thought. “Yeah,” he nods. “We have grandparents to think of. And aunts and uncles.” Maybe someday, he thinks, Aunt Amaya will move in and join them and everything will stop feeling so . . . empty. Maybe someday.

He dismisses the thought. “Hey Rayla, you said you wanted to meet Ezran? We can go looking for him, I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.”

“You two can go on and to that,” Claudia snorts. “I’m off to find my one true love—but tell Ezran I said hello.”

She disappears down the hallway, and Rayla raises an eyebrow at him. “Her ‘one true love’?”

“Our coffee machine,” Callum explains, rolling his eyes. “She has the exact same one at home, but she insists that there’s something special about ours. Something about the atmosphere.” Rayla’s look, if anything, gets even _more_ incredulous, and he laughs. “Come on, let’s go find Ezran. Ez! Ez, were are you?”

They find Ezran in the courtyard, meticulously constructing a small obstacle course in the grass. His toad, Bait, lounges patiently in an oversized carrier nearby. “Ez, what are you doing?”

“I’m making a maze for Bait,” Ezran announces, gesturing proudly to his setup of plastic and cardboard. Privately, Callum thinks Bait could probably clear the thing just by jumping over it, but he refrains from saying so.

“Sounds like fun,” he says instead, and Ezran beams. “This is Rayla, by the way, Claudia’s exchange student. She’s from Glasgow, in Scotland.”

“Nice to meet you, Ezran,” Rayla says, and Ezran’s eyes go wide.

“You have an accent!” he shouts, grinning. “That’s so cool!” Callum grins too, because _we may only be stepbrothers but at least we’ve got that much in common_ , and Rayla rolls her eyes at him.

“I do have an accent,” she nods. “Comes from living in Glasgow and all.” To Callum, she adds, “He’s cute.”

“Oh,” he mutters back, “so it’s cute when he does it, but if I do then I’m a dummy?”

“Of course, dummy” she deadpans, and it’s Callum’s turn to roll his eyes. “I’m joking, Callum, I’m sure you’re a completely wonderful person.” She pauses. “Claudia tells me so, anyway.”

Callum groans.

“Wait a minute,” says Ezran, interrupting his reply, “You said Glasgow. Callum, is she from . . . _that_ Glasgow?” He whispers the name like it’s a secret, but Rayla snorts and he knows she’s overheard.

“Aye, _that_ Glasgow,” she tells Ezran. “Though your brother prefers to call it _actual_ Glasgow.”

Callum sighs again. “Do you make fun of everyone like this?”

“Nope,” she replies cheerily. “Just my friends.” And—well, it’s a little surprising to hear her call him her friend (they’ve barely known each other for a day, after all), but at the same time, it feels right. They’ve already talked for an hour-long drive and he’s given her a tour of his school, and how else are friendships supposed to start, anyway? He has no clue, honestly.

Ezran, as per usual, is completely oblivious to Callum’s little epiphany as he starts pestering Rayla with questions about her hometown. Is it fun to live there? Would Callum like it there?—Glasgow School of Art is his dream college, you know. (She knows, Ezran.) Do you live in the city, or outside it somewhere? Is it cold? I’ve heard the north is cold. (We live in the north too, silly—Shut up, Callum.) Does everyone there have an accent? Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Rayla laughs and answers his questions, some of which Callum has already asked and some of which seem completely out of the blue (Is it true that there’s a hidden village underneath the city?—Ezran, that’s ridiculous, why would there be a—Shut _up_ , Callum!), and the three of them settle onto the grass as they talk. Rayla’s voice hitches for a moment when she mentions Runaan, but the topic gets buried in Ezran’s onslaught of questions and she doesn’t bring it up again.

Callum wonders if he sounds the same whenever he’s forced to talk about Harrow.

Ezran still isn’t finished with his questions by the time Claudia comes to fetch them for dinner. She’s jittering visibly and holding a steaming cup of coffee that, by the look of it, has just been poured. Which means it definitely isn’t her first.

“Claudia,” Callum says slowly, “how many coffees have you had this evening?”

“Oh, don’t be like that, it’s only my second,” she grumbles, but Callum doesn’t believe her for a moment. He casts Rayla an apologetic glance as they walk inside, because he doubts either of the girls will be getting much sleep tonight.

Sometimes, he’s not entirely sure how Claudia’s caffeine intake hasn’t managed to kill her yet.

“So this is Rayla,” is how Harrow greets them when they walk into the dining room, which has already been set for five. He motions for them to sit wherever, so Ezran slides into his usual chair and Callum waits until the guests are seated before taking one. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“You too,” says Rayla. “Thank you for inviting us here.”

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Harrow replies with a wave of his hand. “I cook far too much for the three of us on most nights. It’s nice to have guests over.”

Claudia expresses her thanks as well, albeit in a slightly more jittery fashion. From across the table, Rayla raises an eyebrow at Callum and mouths _he didn’t say a word about the accent_. Callum just sighs.

“So what brings you to the States, Rayla?” Harrow asks once they’re done serving themselves the food. It’s spaghetti night, and based on the portions Callum wonders if they’ll have too much food even with the two additional mouths to feed. He has a sinking feeling he’ll be eating it for lunch tomorrow.

“It’s a cultural exchange program,” Rayla says, twirling her fork idly. “I’m here for a month, and then Claudia will come to Glasgow for a month over the summer holiday.”

“Broadens the horizons,” Claudia adds. She’s halfway through her plate of spaghetti and eyeing her coffee like she’s not sure it’ll last her through the dinner. “I figured, since I’m barely travelling anywhere for college I might as well take this chance, right?”

Privately, Callum’s a little jealous. He wants to be the one spending a month in Glasgow—hell, even a week, just to see what it’s like. He knows Harrow would take him if he asks, but . . . he’d rather not. He can’t quite put his finger on why.

(Okay, so maybe he can. And maybe he just doesn’t want to admit it.)

His stepfather nods approvingly. “It’s always admirable to get to know other cultures,” he says. “It gives us access to perspectives we may not have imagined otherwise.” Callum recognizes the faraway look in his eye—he’s thinking about Mom—and quickly returns to wrapping spaghetti around his fork. It’s safer that way.

“Well, the culture here seems rather welcoming,” says Rayla. “Callum picking us up from the airport was quite gentlemanly.” He looks up, panicked, but she doesn’t catch his warning glare in time. Harrow frowns and turns to him.

“You picked her up from the airport? When did this happen?”

“Uh, well.” Callum scrambles for a response. “It was her _and_ Claudia, by the way, not just Rayla”— _Yeah, as if that’s going to make it better_ —“and she asked me so late and you were already sleeping and I didn’t want to bother you, it’s just—okay it was, uh, late last night?” He finishes sheepishly.

“ _How_ late last night?” Harrow asks. Rayla winces and sends him an apologetic glance. It’s not her fault (if anything, it’s his), so he just looks away.

“Two in the morning,” he sighs. “Maybe later.”

The table falls silent as Harrow stares into his plate. Claudia’s gaping at him like he’s suddenly grown horns or something, Rayla is looking anywhere _but_ at him, and Ezran has developed a sudden fascination with the parmesan shaker. Callum swallows.

“We’ll talk about this later,” says Harrow, in a tone that clearly implies _once our guests are gone for the evening_. “Rayla, Callum told me you were touring Katolis earlier today. What did you think of the campus?”

Callum doesn’t speak for the rest of dinner.

* * *

Ezran scurries off to bed as soon as Claudia and Rayla have left, but Callum stays in the kitchen to do the dishes. He feels, more than hears, Harrow’s presence in the doorway behind him.

“Callum,” his stepfather says slowly, but Callum doesn’t let him finish.

“I’m sorry,” he says, though he doesn’t turn away from the dishes. “I should have told you, really, but I was so afraid you’d say no and she just—she really needed a lift, and I couldn’t exactly refuse her.”

“‘She’ being Claudia.”

He winces. “Yeah.”

“Look, Callum, I understand.” Harrow hasn’t moved closer to him, and Callum sort of appreciates that. “I only wish we could be more honest with each other, okay? You know I want you to feel comfortable here.”

And, this is it. This is why they’ve never clicked, never _quite_ been able to get along. Harrow is angry at him, Callum knows it, and he wants nothing more than for his stepfather to shout at him so he can shout right back and just. _Say_ all the things he’s always wanted to say. He knows Harrow has things he wants to scream at him as well, but they’ve been tiptoeing this dance for so long that it’s almost easier not to break the rhythm. He’ll be off to college in a year anyway, he thinks. No need to rock the boat.

Callum’s never been good with confrontation. And ever since they lost Mom . . . well, part of Harrow seems to have gone with her. By the time Callum realizes he’s taken too long to respond, he turns around to find that Harrow is gone.

Because there are some things they’d both rather not face, and this, apparently, is one of them.

“All right, okay,” he sighs into the soapy dishwater. “Good talk.”

He cleans all of the dishes by hand, spaghetti pot included, and doesn’t bother loading the dishwasher. Organizing the cabinets is more relaxing than just dumping everything into the machine, anyway. He’s just managed to balance the cups so that they all fit nicely on the shelf when his phone pings with a text.

 **Claudia:** _Rayla says she’s sorry about dinner._

 **Claudia:** _Also I should apologize too. I shouldn’t have asked you to come out so late._

He closes the cabinet and texts them back as he’s walking up the stairs to his room.

**Callum:** _Tell her not to worry about it_

**Callum:** _I wouldn’t have come out if it was really a problem_

When he reaches his room, he collapses onto the bed and tosses his phone onto the floor somewhere—he’ll charge it tomorrow, it’s not like he’s going anywhere on a Sunday—before realizing that he still has to shower and change before he can sleep.

He wishes Mom were here. She’d understand—or if she didn’t, at least she’d be able to explain to him exactly what he’s screwing up. She was always good at that sort of thing, though she liked to joke that it was only because Callum gave her plenty of practice.

He wishes they’d had time for more than just practice.

A hot shower and a change of clothes is exactly what Callum _doesn’t_ need, as it turns out, because after he’s done he can’t sleep at all. He’s not sneaking down to Xadia tonight, that’s for sure, so he pulls out his sketchbook instead and moves over to the window for light.

His room overlooks the courtyard, not the road, so there are blessed few streetlamps flooding the window. He enjoys the soft moonlight that filters through the glass, even though it’s probably terrible for his eyesight to be using it to draw. But he doesn’t turn on a light. He doesn’t want anyone in the house to worry.

Callum spends the night making sketches of the day—the school, students seated in perfect rows with pencils at the ready, the rainclouds over Katolis, and Rayla and Ezran chatting on the grass. It’s sort of like a journal, he thinks, except he’s always been better with pictures than words.

Eventually, he feels tired enough to fall asleep, so he shuts the sketchbook and climbs back into bed. He’s not sure what time it is, but he does know that it’s late enough that he probably doesn’t want to check.

So he doesn’t. He doesn’t need that much more on his conscience.

* * *

By the time he walks into school on Monday morning, Callum still hasn’t gotten over his sleep deprivation. He would have grabbed a coffee to wake himself up, but Claudia apparently ran them dry on Saturday and neither he nor Harrow thought to check until half an hour ago.

He’s leaning against his locker and desperately trying to remember his class schedule—he has English first, right? And he needs a book for that—when a hand claps him on the back. Callum jumps, and someone chuckles from behind him.

“Someone’s a little out of it today.”

Callum turns. “Soren?” he asks, blinking. “Wait, what are you doing here? You’ve—you know, graduated.”

The older boy laughs, stepping aside to allow Callum to get his locker open. “I know that,” he says, “but I got in late last night, and apparently Clauds has an exchange student over that _I_ haven’t gotten to meet yet. You haven’t seen her this morning, have you?”

“Uh no, I haven’t,” Callum replies. “You couldn’t, like, wait until after school to do this?”

Soren just shrugs. “Well, you know, I was up anyway for an early-morning jog. Keeping in shape and all that jazz. Thought I’d drop in.” Callum narrows his eyes, and he raises his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, fine. I’ve missed Claudia, too.”

“Just make sure you tell her that,” Callum says with a grin. “She has Calculus first period; I’m sure you can wait for her outside Lujanne’s classroom.” Soren flashes him a blinding smile and takes off down the corridor, jogging despite the fact that it’s far too early in the morning to be moving at anything faster than a crawl.

It’s a little unfair how in shape he is, honestly. Soren and Claudia are both pretty, Callum thinks, but in completely opposite ways, which is a little confusing since they both must have inherited that trait from their mother. Viren’s not . . . unattractive (Callum would never say so to his face, anyway), but there’s no way he’s the source of either of his children’s looks.

One of life’s great mysteries, Callum supposes.

He adjusts his scarf again and pulls _The Great Gatsby_ from his locker before rushing off to first-period English, where he’s almost certain he’s going to fall asleep. He silently curses Claudia’s love of their coffee machine and reminds himself to drop by the store on his way home.

He makes it all the way to lunch before realizing he’s forgotten to pack one, which is way Claudia and Rayla find him groaning, hugging his backpack and pressing his forehead into the table.

They slide onto the bench on either side of him, and Callum is surprised at how natural it already feels. Or maybe it’s the fact that Soren and Claudia used to do this all the time and Callum still isn’t used to the former’s absence.

“Rough day?” Claudia asks as he surfaces. He thinks about it for a second, but it hasn’t been, not really. He’s just tired, so he tells her as much. “I feel you,” she responds, patting his shoulder, and the lethargy coursing through his veins is so strong that he doesn’t even feel his heart rate pick up the way it usually does at her touch.

Or maybe—it’s optimistic, but maybe—he’s finally getting over it. It’s only a matter of time before he does.

“Junior year’s the worst of it, don’t worry,” Claudia assures him, like he doesn’t remember helping her through the hell she put herself through last year with her six AP classes and just as many extracurriculars. Callum’s barely doing half that, and he’s still exhausted. “Speaking of which, can I see your class schedule?”

“Uh, sure,” he says. “I can send it to you or something. Why do you need it?”

“It’s more for me than her,” says Rayla from his other side. “She’s taking all these ridiculous courses in maths and engineering and whatnot, and I can’t fathom a word they’re saying. I’d like to learn something while I’m here, thank you very much.”

“I think I can convince the front office to let you shadow Callum instead of me for the week,” Claudia says. “As long as you’re okay with that too, Callum. They love me up there.”

“Sure, I’d be fine with that,” he says. Rayla sends him a grateful look, and honestly, he sympathizes. Claudia’s courseload is . . . ambitious, to say the least. More like intense. He doubts she’s even heard of the phrase “senior spring”. “You’re lucky I’m a grade lower than she is,” he tells Rayla. “Next year my schedule is almost entirely art classes.”

“I’d expect nothing less of you, Mister Obsessed-With-Glasgow,” she replies, and he laughs despite himself. Her gaze softens, and she adds, “If you get tired of me following you around, I can always go back to shadowing Claudia. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Callum says, waving her off. “It’ll be nice to have a friend in class anyway.” At her exasperated look, he says, “Okay, fine, if that does happen I’ll be sure to let you know. But I don’t think it will.”

“And why’re you so certain?”

He shrugs. “Anyone willing to talk with Ezran for an hour straight is worth having as a friend, in my opinion.”

Rayla considers him for a moment, then smirks. “Do you base all of your potential friendships around their how well they can talk with your brother?”

“Of course he does,” Claudia scoffs before Callum can answer. “There was a month where he refused to speak with Soren because my idiot brother accidentally said something mean to Ez.” She pauses. “It wasn’t the best of times.”

“Hey,” Callum says, maybe a little too defensively, “he doesn’t make friends easily, okay? The least I can do is . . . help him out a little. And come on,” he turns to Rayla, “Ez isn’t the only limiting factor. _I_ have to like the person too—which I do. In case you were wondering.”

“Aw,” she grins, “two days in, and he’s already attached.” It’s a little surprising, now that he thinks about it—Ezran isn’t the best at making friends, but he’s no socialite either. “Don’t worry, Callum, I’m quite fond of you as well. And of Ez, ‘in case you were wondering’.”

Callum chooses to ignore her parroting—apparently this is going to happen whenever he says anything even remotely embarrassing—and replies, “Good. I don’t think this friendship would work out if you weren’t.”

He’s teasing, but on some level he means it—he doubts he could ever be true friends with someone who doesn’t like Ezran. He’s lucky the people he tends to befriend seem to be good for his brother as well.

Rayla just laughs at him, and they turn to simpler topics until the lunch bell rings. (Soren did manage to reach Claudia before school, it seems. Rayla claims not to know what to think of him, but Callum feels inclined to point out that Soren’s a bit of an acquired taste. They’re living in the same house, though, so he figures they’ll get to know each other soon enough.)

The first thing Callum does after leaving school is to drive to the store and purchase several heavy bags of coffee beans. He leaves two in the pantry and brings the third up to his room to hide in the closet. Just in case.

* * *

By Friday afternoon, Callum has decided that having Rayla in his classes is the best thing that’s happened to him since the first time Ezran complimented one of his drawings. And he’s pretty sure he isn’t even exaggerating.

She’s just so easy to talk to, is the thing. He’s not friends with very many of his classmates, so having someone he can just turn to in the middle of class and make wry comments with is very—liberating. Most of the time, Rayla pretends not to be amused by his commentary, but Callum can tell it’s mainly to annoy him. (She’s taken to making fun of him when simply acting exasperated doesn’t work, which usually results in endless circles of eye-rolling and barely-concealed laughter. His teachers might be a little annoyed.)

In just five days, she’s become a permanent fixture at their lunch table, and also around Callum’s house—apparently Soren and Viren are in the middle of an argument about the latter’s work practices, and since it’s the middle of April, Claudia has taken to locking herself inside the Sciences building and stress-prepping for her AP exams. Callum imagines their house isn’t a pleasant place to be right now.

The first time Rayla shows up unannounced on his doorstep, it’s allegedly for help on their American Lit homework. The second time, it’s for Statistics, and the third time she just throws her backpack onto the couch without opening it and admits that she’s been looking for an excuse to be anywhere but at home.

“Claudia isn’t even home tonight,” she complains, collapsing face-up on the couch and kicking her backpack away. “I had to walk all the way back from Katolis, and when I got inside, I found Soren screaming at Viren something awful and Viren glaring right back. I just turned around and left, I don’t think either of them noticed me.”

So it sounds like Soren has finally had enough of his dad’s shit. Callum thinks he knows why—Viren’s business dealings are, for lack of a better word, a little shady—but he probably could have picked a better time to do it.

“Wait a minute, what’s Claudia doing tonight?” he asks Rayla. She’s usually free on Fridays, he thinks.

“Arguing with your headmaster about whether or not she can take the keys to the laboratories for the weekend,” Rayla says. “Last I saw her, she was stalking toward the head office with murder in her eyes.”

Callum briefly debates calling Claudia and asking if she’s okay, but—she always gets like this around testing season, and he worries that if he interrupts her studying she could very possibly bite his head off. “I pity Principal Opeli, then,” he winces. “I’m sorry that their place isn’t the most welcoming at the moment.”

Rayla sits up, letting Callum take a seat on the couch beside her. “I’ve still got yours,” she says, grinning, “and considering the quality of the food here, I may even like it better.”

“Oh, of course you’re here for the food.” Callum laughs. He hesitates, then adds, “But I’ll tell Harrow you said so. He’ll be pleased to hear it.”

He sees the faint spark of interest when he mentions Harrow—the way her eyes jump to the stairwell, the slight shifting of her posture to face him a little more. But he doesn’t feel ready for that, not yet, so he pretends he hasn’t noticed and leans back into the couch instead. Rayla imitates him, letting her eyes drift shut as she does so, and Callum finds himself smiling.

“Someone looks comfortable,” he says, and Rayla responds by swatting him lightly on the arm.

“Shut up,” she mumbles, “‘m sleeping.”

She falls silent after that, and Callum is pretty sure she’s actually fallen asleep. He fetches his sketchbook from upstairs, just for something to do, and when he returns to the living room Rayla has sprawled herself out on the couch again. He takes a seat on the floor and starts sketching idly.

It starts out as pictures of his day—Claudia and Rayla at the lunch table, the way he managed (for once) to park Zym perfectly between the lines in his space, Ezran playing with Bait in the yard—but eventually, Callum finds himself drawing Rayla. He’s been doing a lot of that, lately, but this is the first time he’s attempting to draw her outside of a journal sketch.

It shouldn’t be any more intimidating than usual, but for whatever reason, it is.

He pulls a memory from the night he first met her, in which she’s dragging her suitcase behind her as she searches for the sign that Claudia is holding up next to him. Her hair is askew from spending seven hours on a plane and she looks a little unsettled to be walking through such an unfamiliar place, but all in all Callum is surprised at how composed he’s drawn her.

Frowning, he double-checks the image to make sure he’s remembering correctly. But no, he is—he couldn’t tell at the time, but the expression he remembers on her face is a clear mix of determination and intensity. It’s not the face he would expect from someone visiting a foreign country for the first time.

He decides to leave it—portraits should be honest, after all, and _if_ they’re skewed it should be in the direction in which the subjects want to see themselves—and starts filling in the details on her suitcase instead. He’s just finishing some shading when a voice breaks into his thoughts.

“What are you drawing?” Ezran asks from over his shoulder, making Callum jump. How long has his brother been standing there? “Is that Rayla?”

“Keep your voice down, she’s asleep,” Callum hisses, gesturing to the couch with his pencil. “And yeah, it’s Rayla.”

Ezran grins, and makes no effort to lower his voice when he says, “It looks just like her!”

“What looks like me?” Rayla asks from the couch, and this time Callum slams his sketchbook shut as he starts. “Ugh, sorry, did I—was I asleep?”

“I’m just drawing,” he says quickly. “You, uh—yeah, you were. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“So you decided to draw me instead,” she says, sitting up and lifting an eyebrow at him. He can feel himself blushing, but he nods anyway. No point in denying it. “Can I see it?” Rayla asks, and Callum freezes.

“It’s—um, it’s not finished yet,” he says. (It’s technically the truth; he still has to finish the suitcase and maybe add a background.) “But maybe later?”

Rayla hesitates, and Ezran interrupts her before she can reply. “You should show her, Callum! It’s really really good.”

“It’s not finished yet,” he repeats stubbornly. “And how long were you watching me, anyway?”

“A few minutes,” Ezran says, a touch too proudly in Callum’s opinion. To Rayla, he adds, “Callum is like that when he’s drawing. You could shatter a glass cup next to him and he won’t even notice.”

“Which Ez only knows because he’s done it before.” Callum stands, tucking his sketchbook under his arm, and moves toward the couch. “In my defense, it was a pretty difficult drawing.”

Ezran crosses his arms. “In _my_ defense, he was sitting in the hallway and only I dropped the glass because I was trying not to trip over him.” He drops onto the couch next to Rayla, and Callum belatedly notices that he’s still cradling Bait. He must have just come back inside. “You should show Rayla your drawing, Callum.”

Callum glances between the two of them—Ezran holding his toad in his lap and giving his best innocent smile, and Rayla shyly not-quite-meeting his eyes. He sighs. It’s difficult enough to say no to Ezran, and now he may have to add Rayla to his list of people he can’t refuse as well.

“Fine,” he says, “but just this once. Ez, you should go wash up for dinner, and put Bait back in the terrarium.”

Ezran pouts, but does as he’s told, disappearing up the stairs with Bait in tow. Callum watches him go, then turns back to Rayla. “You can stay for dinner, if you’d like,” he says. “Especially if you compliment Harrow on his cooking again. I’m sure he’d love to hear it from you directly.”

“That would depend,” says Rayla. Callum looks at her, confused.

“On?”

“On whether or not you’re using the invitation to stall on showing me that drawing of yours.”

Okay, so maybe he’s stalling a little. It’s not that he’s uncomfortable with showing her (he doesn’t usually have problems with showing friends his art), or he thinks it’s particularly bad (actually, he’s pretty sure it’s one of his better pieces), but . . . Rayla hasn’t seen his art before, and she’s grown up just miles away from a college that specializes in it. He doesn’t want her to think badly of him.

Taking a deep breath, he reminds himself that just because she grew up in Glasgow doesn’t mean she’s obsessively studied the professional output of graduates from its College of Art like he has. Probably.

“What? Of course I’m not stalling,” he lies, whipping out his sketchbook to prove it. He flips through it until he finds the page he’s been working on, then presents it to her. “See? Here you are. Not stalling at all.”

“Oh,” is the first thing Rayla says, and for a moment Callum worries he’s offended her—does she not like it? Has he screwed up some crucial detail of her appearance?—but then she says, “This is me in the terminal.”

“Oh—uh, yeah,” Callum confirms. “It is.”

She looks up at him. “When you said you were drawing me, I thought you meant . . . you know, me sleeping just now. I wasn’t expecting this.”

In retrospect, that sort of makes sense. “I have an eidetic memory,” he explains. “It’s like my brain takes photographs of things, and I can look at them whenever I want to. This is my first memory of you.”

For a moment, Rayla refuses to meet his eyes, and he could swear that she’s blushing. “That’s a bit sweet, actually,” she says, staring at the drawing. “I look . . . confident.”

“You did,” Callum says, “and I can say that with certainty, because, you know, photographic memory.”

“But I _wasn’t_ confident,” she says, and it’s Callum’s turn to turn to her with interest. “I was so nervous, coming here. I had no idea what it would be like. I didn’t know if I would like it, or if it’d be horrible, or . . .” she trails off with a shrug. “I just didn’t know.”

“I mean, I’d say it’s turned out fine so far,” Callum says, and she rolls her eyes at him.

“It has, and I’m happy it has,” she tells him. “And I’d be willing to stay for dinner, if your family’s got extra portions for me. Eating with Viren and Soren tonight sounds pretty unappetizing.”

Callum shudders just thinking about it. “You heard Harrow last time, he always makes way too much food. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

They are very much fine, as it turns out—even with Rayla to help them, Harrow’s made far too much lasagna for one meal, and they end up stuffing about a quarter of it into the back of the already-overfilled fridge. The conversation at dinner is considerably lighter than last weekend, too, which Callum is grateful for. By the time Rayla leaves for the night, she’s compliment Harrow’s cooking approximately a half-dozen times and his stepfather is practically beaming. Callum leaves Harrow humming happily as he starts the dishes to give Rayla a ride home in Zym.

He walks her up to the door of Viren’s house, because they’ve somehow gotten into a discussion about whether lasagna is a type of cake and he hasn’t quite made his point yet. By the time she points out that she should probably head inside, he’s not sure either of them have.

“Thank you for letting me stay at your place,” Rayla says. Lingering in the doorway, she adds, “It means a lot to me. And—I don’t know how much it’s worth, coming from a non-artist, but I think your drawings are quite pretty.”

“You’ve only seen one,” he tries to wave her off, “and it’s one of my better ones. It was easy to make it pretty, considering the subject.”

“Smooth,” she comments, arching an eyebrow, and the full import of what he’s just said hits him like a ton of bricks.

“I didn’t—” he sputters. “I mean, I don’t—well, I do think you’re pretty.” He _does_ , he realizes, and he’s not sure how he hasn’t noticed before, but now is _not_ the time to be having epiphanies. “But I didn’t—I didn’t mean—Rayla, stop laughing at me!”

She does eventually stop laughing at him, but it takes a few moments. Callum is sure he’s bright red at this point, and he pointedly tries to look anywhere except at Rayla. “Oh, don’t be so embarrassed,” she tells him, still grinning a little. “It’s a compliment, I know what you meant.”

She reaches out to pat him on the shoulder. Callum lets her.

“Well,” he says, making an effort to sound normal again, “good. Yes. As long as you know what I meant.”

“Of course I do,” she assures him, and he thinks she’s blushing a little, too. It’s hard to tell under the porchlight. “And you’re quite pretty yourself, you know.”

“Ah—um, thanks,” he says. His hands move for his scarf before he realizes he isn’t wearing it—he hasn’t had it since he got home from school, he thinks—so he forces them to remain still. “I appreciate it. Uh, I’ll see you Monday?”

“I’ll see you on Monday,” Rayla nods, and she casts him as smile as she slips inside and shuts the door.

He spends half of the drive home groaning in embarrassment and the other half grinning like an idiot at her praise.

* * *

The next day is Saturday, so as promised, Callum takes Ezran to Xadia. He still hasn’t figured out what he’s going to say about Harrow when the questions inevitably come up, but—Ez is distracted enough that Callum hopes they might not.

“Wow,” says his brother, gazing at the sketches and paintings Callum has tacked onto the walls of the rented studio (well, one of the walls—he’s trying to fill them up one at a time). Most of them are quick works, made to get himself used to the feel of the space, but here and there he thinks he has a gem. “Did you make all of these? How long have you been doing this?”

“A few months,” Callum admits. It’s been closer to six or seven, but that’s not too far off, right? He crosses the room to drop a covering over one of the easels—an unfinished painting of Bait he started a week or two ago. It feels . . . off, somehow, and suddenly Callum regrets not finishing it before taking his little impromptu break. He should really come in this week and try.

He takes further advantage of Ezran’s state of distraction to also drop a sheet of canvas on top of a pile of sketches on the floor. He probably should have tidied up before letting Ezran in, he thinks.

Once he’s finished inspecting Callum’s artwork, Ezran settles down on the floor. (Callum still hasn’t gotten around to bringing in a chair—and anyway, he’s not quite sure where he would put it, so the point is moot anyway.) He picks at his jacket for a few moments, and Callum knows what’s coming next.

“You know you could do this at home, right?” Ezran says. He looks pleadingly at Callum, but Callum can’t bring himself to meet his brother’s eyes. “I know Dad would let you use one of the empty rooms. You wouldn’t have to sneak out at night anymore.”

Ezran is right, is the problem. It’s just . . . how can Callum explain it? The air at home, in the mansion, is all wrong for him. Sure, he can make small sketches here and there—his journal proves that much—but to really work, he needs . . . something else. Something more free. A place where he doesn’t feel like he’s constantly being stretched or strangled or broken apart, where he feels at peace.

And yes, he knows that’s what home is supposed to be.

“I don’t know, Ez,” he says finally. “This place is just . . . better for me, I think. It’s separate from everything else, so I can concentrate more.”

“It’s so empty,” says Ezran, his gaze flickering over the bare floor and the mostly-empty walls. “You don’t even have any decorations.”

Callum gestures to his art wall. “That’s because I’m making my own.”

Now that Ezran mentions it, though, it is sort of monolithic in here. Maybe he should get a potted plant or something for company; he’s certainly in here often enough.

His brother sighs and gets back up, tracing a finger over one of the paintings. It features Ezran on his first day of school this year, clutching his backpack on his way through the gate. Callum remembers painting it—that painting was his first project upon arriving in the studio. It feels like ages ago.

“So this is where you sneak out to at night?” Ezran asks him. “Every time you’re gone?”

Callum nods. “Well, every time except last Saturday. I guess I’m here quite a bit.”

Ezran sighs, turning back to face Callum. “I think you should tell Dad.” Callum opens his mouth to refuse immediately, but he keeps going. “Even if you don’t want to work at home, he’d let you keep all this. He knows you like doing art.”

And, yes, Harrow does know that. The sketchbooks Callum receives yearly for his birthday are a sign that he even approves of it. But for the past few months, Xadia has been like a refuge for him. A secret, but a safe secret, because at least he’s not out on the streets doing drugs or something. “I just don’t think I’m ready for him to know,” he tells Ez quietly.

“You will be someday,” Ezran says, with such conviction that for a moment Callum believes it, too. “I won’t tell Dad until then. Promise.”

His brother pulls him into a hug, and Callum practically melts into it. “Thanks, Ez,” he says. “I know it’s hard, me and Harrow being—the way we are, but I promise I’m working on it. I want to love him as much as you do, really.”

Ezran looks up at him, and this time, Callum forces himself to meet his eyes. “Can’t you just . . . do it?” Ezran says. “If you want to, I mean. What’s the difference between _wanting_ to care about someone and _actually_ caring about them?”

Callum opens his mouth to respond, but he can’t seem to find the right words. It’s not something he can explain, not to a ten-year-old who’s always known exactly who his father is. It’s unfortunate, he supposes, that their relationship with Harrow is practically the one thing he and Ezran don’t share.

Maybe someday he’ll fix that. He certainly hopes he can.

* * *

The next time Callum sets foot inside Xadia Studios is Monday night. Rayla isn’t in all of his classes anymore (apparently exchange students have to pick an actual schedule for themselves after a week of shadowing), and coupled with the weekend, it feels like he hasn’t talked to her in forever. And Claudia is even worse—he’s seen her exactly once since Friday, engrossed in a Calculus textbook and refusing to give more than a monosyllabic response to his questions.

It’s not like he needs either of them to survive, of course. He can function fine on his own, thank you very much, but it irks him to not have someone to talk to. Especially in his classes—he’s gotten way too used to having Rayla by his side, and now that they’re only together for half of the day, being alone the other half makes him feel particularly lost.

The idea that she’s going to be gone _permanently_ in another three weeks is another problem entirely, and not one he really wants to think about right now.

So, in an effort to get his mind off the topic, he finds himself in his studio, attempting to finish that painting of Bait he hasn’t worked on in a week and a half. It’s . . . not going all that well.

“Come on, you stupid toad,” he growls at the canvas. “Why can’t you just work with me here?”

The various pigments comprising the image of Bait, unsurprisingly, don’t respond.

Callum thinks it has something to do with the style—he’d liked it at the time, but now he thinks he started off with too dark of a color palette. Now he wants to make it brighter, just a little, but that won’t do because it would set the tone completely off. A bright, happy-colored Bait shouldn’t have such an angry expression on his little toad face.

“This,” he mutters under his breath, “is why you don’t take breaks in the middle of projects.” He drops his brush into his water cup and swirls it around for a while, staring at the canvas. He needs a different inspiration, he thinks. Or maybe a suitable background he can work on.

He’s just reaching for his sketchbook to see if he can find some inspiration when he hears a knock on the door of his room.

Blind panic flashes through Callum’s head—maybe Harrow has noticed he’s missing, somehow, or maybe something’s gone horribly wrong at home and Ezran has come looking for him—and he’s at the door in an instant, throwing it open and peering outside.

“Ez, is that—” he freezes, dumbfounded, when he sees the face staring back at him. “Uh. Hi?”

“Callum,” says Rayla, giving him a nod that feels almost formal. And—is it just him, or is she shaking? “May I come in?”

“What—yeah, of course.” Callum steps aside and ushers Rayla into the room, cursing the lack of anywhere comfortable to sit. She’s definitely shaking—Callum hasn’t seen her like this before. “Is something wrong?”

“If—if this is a bad time, I can go,” she says, as if Callum would let her. She’s staring numbly at the wall, and he doesn’t trust her ability to get home without getting herself hurt. How did she manage to find him here, anyway? “I don’t want to force this on you, but you’re my friend, and I—I—”

“Hey.” He reaches a hand out and places it on her shoulder. “Hey, Rayla, look at me. You’re not bothering me here, I promise. It’s okay.”

Rayla takes several deep breaths before turning toward him. He can tell she’s blinking back tears. “I don’t know why I’m feeling like this,” she whispers, staring down at the floor. “It’s stupid.”

“Obviously not, if it’s causing one of my best friends to invade my art studio in the middle of the night.” It’s a lame attempt at a joke, and it falls flat, so Callum hurries on. “You don’t have to if you don’t want, but—do you want to talk about it?”

She nods, but doesn’t say anything. Callum sits down on the floor, leaning his back against the wall, and Rayla joins him silently. He’s just about to prompt her again when she blurts out, “Runaan didn’t want me to come here.”

“To the States, you mean?” he asks when she doesn’t elaborate. Rayla nods again.

“He’s always pushing me to be the best I can possibly be—he never accepts anything less. Sometimes I think that’s a good thing, since I want that for myself too, and he’s a good father, mostly, but other times—this trip, for instance—” Her voice breaks. Callum reaches out and grasps her wrist, just to reassure her that he’s there. “He said it would just be a distraction. That I wouldn’t accomplish anything out here, other than wasting a month of my life. We had a massive row about it the night I left.”

Suddenly, the way she’s always talked about Runaan makes sense—the bitterness, the deflection, even the way she initially bore the drive home from the airport: _like something was chasing her_ , he recalls. She’s making Runaan angry by merely _being_ here. No wonder their relationship is a bit strained.

“We were both so angry,” Rayla whispers, “and I thought—I thought it would be fine, we’d both take this month to cool down and when I came back everything would be all right again.”

“But?” Callum asks, because he can feel it coming.

“I miss him,” she sighs. “I told you it’s stupid. I’m homesick, Callum, and I miss him so much it _hurts_ , but I can’t talk to him because I’m worried he’s still angry with me.”

She falls silent after that. He gives her wrist a squeeze before he asks, “Do you want me to say something?”

“Yes, please.”

“It’s not your fault, first of all,” he says. “Family can be—complicated, sometimes. I know that firsthand. But you and Runaan, you care about each other, right? Even if you’re angry with each other sometimes.”

“I suppose so,” Rayla says, but she relents at his look. “I mean, yes, we do.”

“It’s only natural to miss the people you care about,” Callum shrugs, “and I’d be surprised if he didn’t miss you, too. I’d talk to him, if I were you. Sometimes people just need little reminders of what’s important to them. Or who.”

She looks at him, the ghost of a smile now present on her lips. “Is that why you’ve got so many paintings of Ezran in here?”

“Yeah,” Callum grins back. “He pretty much means the world to me.”

Rayla leans her head onto his shoulder. “I’m not exactly surprised,” she says. “None of Claudia, though?”

“I’ve never really felt comfortable painting her,” Callum replies truthfully. He’ll sketch Claudia, sure—he’s got a whole pile of the things under a canvas in the corner from Ezran’s visit—but somehow, adding paint and color has always felt like a little too much commitment. Like he’s afraid he’ll spoil something if he focuses too hard on capturing her image. “That’s all.”

She considers him for a moment. “And none of your stepfather, either.”

“Ah,” Callum mutters. “That one’s a little more complicated.”

“Why is that?” she asks him. “You call him Harrow—I know, I call my dad Runaan, but he asked me to do that when he adopted me and we’re both comfortable that way. It’s different with you. It’s more . . . distancing.”

“It’s really complicated,” he insists. “I’m not sure of all of it, myself.” He pauses for a moment to consider. “I’ll make you a deal, though.”

“What sort of deal?” Rayla asks him suspiciously.

“You send a text Runaan—it’s morning in Glasgow right now, or close enough—and I’ll try to explain. As best I can.”

Hesitating for a moment, Rayla nods, then fishes her phone from her pocket. “Of course you’d know the time difference between here and Glasgow.” Callum thinks she sounds fond, but at the very least she no longer sounds quite as upset. She unlocks the phone and stops, staring at the home screen. “What if he doesn’t want to speak to me?” she asks. “Then what do I do?”

“I don’t think that’s likely,” Callum says. “You and Runaan—you have a good relationship, a working relationship. Trust in it.”

Rayla nods at him, takes a deep breath, and sends her text.

“Okay,” she says, looking up at him, “that was my end of the deal. Now it’s time for yours.”

“Fine, fine.” Callum tugs at his scarf while he tries to find the words to explain his relationship with Harrow. He’s never really tried before this before, he realizes—everyone around him sort of takes his awkward familial ties for granted. Especially Callum himself. “I guess it’s kind of like—no, that’s not right. I guess—”

The sound of Rayla’s phone buzzing interrupts his train of thought. He’s annoyed for a moment, but then he realizes who it is, and he grins. “Told you he’d want to talk to you.”

Rayla, for her part, doesn’t even hesitate in picking up the call. Runaan’s face appears on her phone screen, and for a split second Callum is afraid she’s going to start crying.

“Um, hi,” she says, and suddenly Callum feels like an intruder in a very private conversation. He bolts to his feet and busies himself with organizing his paintbrushes—it’s not at all distracting, but this way he can at least pretend he’s not paying any attention.

It’s going great, right up until he knocks the water cup off-balance, makes an _incredibly_ ill-advised dive to catch it, and ends up knocking the entire easel to the floor with a crash.

Because fate apparently hates him, he goes down with it.

Rayla breaks off in the middle of describing the many facets of Katolis Academy—hey, just because he was trying not to pay attention doesn’t mean he was succeeding—to yell, “Callum!” and rush to his side. “What happened?”

“I’m okay,” he groans, shoving a dripping sheet of canvas away from his face. He hopes he doesn’t have any paint in his hair; that would be a nightmare to explain to Harrow in the morning. “Just an idiot. A clumsy idiot.”

Rayla lets out a snort at that. From her phone, Runaan’s voice says, “Callum? Rayla, are you with someone?”

“Oh, uh, I suppose I am.” She turns the phone so that the camera is facing him. “This is Callum, one of my new friends. We’re in his art studio.”

For all he knows, Callum probably has paint splattered all over his clothes right now. His left sleeve is soaking wet, he’s half-laying on the floor and struggling to push the easel away without touching the canvas, and—

This isn’t how he’s envisioned meeting Rayla’s father, is the point. If he wasn’t flushed red already, he certainly is now.

“Nice to meet you, Runaan,” he says, pulling himself to his feet. “Uh, sorry for interrupting your conversation. I’m Callum. But, uh, you already knew that because Rayla just told you. Right.”

Runaan stares at him, considering, and even though they’re an ocean apart Callum finds himself shivering. Or maybe that’s the water creeping up his jacket. “Callum, hm?” says Runaan. He nods. “Tell me then, Callum, what exactly is my daughter doing in your art studio at,” he pauses to glance off-screen at something, “nearly one in the morning?”

“It’s—she’s—um,” he sputters, at the same time as Rayla groans, “It’s not like that!”

She whips the phone around so it’s facing her again. “I can’t believe—Runaan, you know I’d never! Callum’s a friend. A good friend. I wouldn’t even be talking to you right now if it wasn’t for him—”

“Relax, Ray,” Runaan interrupts her. He sounds a little exasperated. “I was just teasing. You know I trust you” He hesitates. “Though the fact that you texted first helps considerably.”

Callum sighs with relief. An angry, perfectionist, exchange-student dad is not something he wants to deal with right now. Especially not Rayla’s.

“I,” he says, stepping carefully around the fallen easel, “will leave you two in here to talk. If anyone needs me, I’ll be outside trying to find some paper towels, and also what’s left of my dignity.”

He hears Rayla snickering as he pulls the door shut behind him, but he nobly chooses to ignore it.

It takes him nearly twenty minutes to find a decent number of paper towels—Xadia might be open twenty-four hours, but they aren’t going to leave supplies out in the middle of the night for anyone to steal—so by the time he returns to his room, Rayla is off her phone, inspecting his art wall.

“Sorry about that, again,” Callum says. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your reunion with Runaan like that.”

“You’re the one who orchestrated it in the first place,” she reminds him, grabbing one of the towels and dabbing at his sleeve. “And I interrupted your painting. I should be thanking you.”

“Yeah, well,” he shrugs. “I hate to see my friends unhappy. Everything good between the two of you?”

“Well, he’s still not thrilled that I’m here,” Rayla admits. “But you were right, we both miss each other. And it’s nice not being angry, and not worrying about whether he’s angry.” She gives up on trying to dry his arm off—it’s too late anyway, he’s already soaked—and pulls away. “He likes you, though.”

“He—uh, he does?” Callum frowns at her. “Are you sure about that?”

“Of course I am, you dummy,” she laughs. “He knows you’re my friend, and he knows you convinced me to talk to him earlier. He even called you wise—”

“That’s a pretty high compliment.” Callum grins. “I’m a little proud.”

“—but then I told him about the accent thing, and he took it back immediately.”

He groans. “I was _tired_ , okay? I can’t believe I’ve made a fool of myself literally whenever I’ve met a new member of your family.”

“Maybe you need to stop meeting them in the wee hours of the morning.”

“It’s not like I’m _trying_ to!”

Rayla bursts into laughter at that. Callum just groans again and continues his attempts to right his easel. “Hey, you,” she says after a moment. “Sad artist.”

He rolls his eyes at the moniker, but he responds anyway. “Yeah?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “We’ve seen your embarrassing moments, and we’re fond of you anyways. First impressions are only temporary.”

Callum wants to argue that—he’s pretty sure he’s learned otherwise at some point in Psychology—but he decides it’s probably not worth it. “Well,” he says instead, “if that’s the least embarrassing thing I ever do in front of you, I’ll be pretty surprised.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Rayla grins at him, “I’m looking forward to the others.”

Callum gives a heavy sigh, and Rayla laughs at him. It’s almost concerning how normal this already feels.

* * *

After Monday night, Rayla becomes a regular visitor at Callum’s midnight art excursions. She’d gone to his house that first night, apparently, and she’d been distraught enough to wake up Ezran when she couldn’t find him in his room (“How did you know I wasn’t?”—“You really should keep your windows locked, honestly Callum”), and he’d been the one to send her to him.

He makes a mental note to thank Ezran later, both for not questioning any of it and for managing to go about the whole business without letting anything slip to Harrow. He also gives Rayla his phone number, because the whole skulking-through-the-night business could definitely have been avoided if she had just been able to, you know, _call_ him.

Some nights, she turns up unannounced anyways. Callum finds he doesn’t mind.

“What would you do if you showed up and I wasn’t here?” he asks her after he lets her in one night. He’s been in the studio nightly for the past week or so, which means his sleep schedule is completely shot, and he’s seriously debating using the weekend to fall into a 48-hour-long coma. “I don’t come in every night, you know.”

Rayla settles into the corner she’s claimed as ‘hers’ and pulls her phone from her pocket. “Go back to Claudia’s, probably,” she says. “I’m not mean enough to wake you up at two in the morning.”

“Why are _you_ awake at this hour, anyway? You’re not still jet-lagged, are you?” It’s been two weeks already— _she’ll be gone in another two_ , a voice in his head warns, to which he replies, _shut up_ —and he’s pretty sure that only lasts a few days.

“I don’t sleep a lot,” Rayla shrugs. “This way, I can talk to Runaan and hang around you as well. I don’t tend to get more than four hours a night anyway.”

“That’s definitely not healthy,” Callum tells her. “And I can’t imagine how watching me paint for hours is all that interesting.”

“I know, you’re a terrible host,” she deadpans. “So boring. Where’s the excitement, Callum? The pizzazz?”

He raises an eyebrow. “What do you want me to do, narrate my painting? Maybe perform some sort of interpretive dance while I’m at it?”

“That would be ideal,” she sniffs, before rolling her eyes at him. “No, you dummy, I’m happy enough with your company. It’s nice to have a friend.”

“Yeah,” Callum agrees. “Yeah, it is.” He stares at the painting in front of him, the half-salvaged outline of Bait that he knocked over last Monday. The colors still seem all off; in fact, he doesn’t think he’s made any progress at all tonight.

He drops his brush into the water and shoves his paints to the side. This isn’t working.

“Come on,” he says to Rayla. “Let’s go somewhere.”

She gives him a suspicious look, but shoves her phone into her pocket and stands. “Go somewhere?”

“Yeah,” he replies. “Somewhere, anywhere—it’ll be an adventure. That’s something friends do, right? Go on adventures?”

Rayla just rolls her eyes at him. “You utter Romantic,” she smirks. “Okay, sure. Let’s go on an adventure.”

They end up walking, because Callum insists that it’s not a proper adventure if Zym just carries them everywhere. But downtown Leavenworth isn’t a very interesting place (especially not past midnight, when everything is closed except the odd 24-hour diner and Xadia), which means their ‘adventure’ very quickly turns into more of an ‘amateur streetlight inspection’. And that’s only because Callum would rather not describe it as a ‘walk’, which is what it really is.

“What about this one?” Rayla says, stepping beneath another lamp. “If you’re such an expert.” As Callum watches, the light seems to pool around her, giving her a sort of golden shroud. If he moves back just a little bit, frame it just so . . . there. “Callum?”

He jumps. “It’s, uh, very bright,” he says, gesturing vaguely. “Bright and . . . lamp-y.” She rolls her eyes and steps out from under it, her halo vanishing around her. “Sorry, got lost in thought for a moment there.”

“I could tell.”

They continue down the street in a companionable silence until Callum realizes they’re approaching the school. “Say,” Rayla says when she spies the familiar shape of the Sciences building, “Katolis is empty at night, isn’t it?”

“Empty aside from Claudia,” he snorts. “But yeah, no one’s really supposed to be here after hours.”

“Good,” she says, grabbing his hand and pulling him forward. “Follow me.”

“Rayla, what—”

“I refuse to end this adventure without doing any real adventuring,” she tells him. “Now come on. I think I found a way onto the roof of the English building last week, and there’s no better time to test it.”

“Only if it’s safe,” he protests feebly. (He’s pretty sure it won’t be, or someone else would have tried it by now and gotten caught. But he can hope, right?)

“Of course it’s safe, dummy,” Rayla says before rushing off into the night, pulling him behind her by the hand. “Well. It should be, anyway.”

To exactly nobody’s surprise, it isn’t.

Callum hears her curse at the sound of metal groaning, and he thinks something falls to the ground near him—a chunk of loose stone, maybe?—but in less than five minutes, Rayla is dangling her feet over the side of the English building and grinning down at him.

“Come on,” she calls, “it’s not that bad. Looks like people come up here all the time.”

He frowns. “What makes you think that?”

“There’s a stash of beer up here,” she replies. “Fairly new, I think. I’m not an expert.”

“Yeah, let’s leave that well alone,” Callum mutters, but he starts hauling himself up the wall anyway. “Climbing is difficult enough without the alcohol.”

It takes him considerably longer than Rayla to reach the top, and by the time he does, he’s pretty sure his clothes are positively covered in scrapes. “You made that look far too easy,” he complains.

“Lots of practice,” she grins. “How do you think I made it up to your window, you dumb artist?”

That—he hadn’t even considered that, actually. “I don’t know, I just sort of. Didn’t question it.” He takes a seat beside her on the roof, enjoying the breeze washing over them. “The view from up here is pretty.”

“For a city, I suppose.” She’s gazing transfixed into the distance, though, so Callum figures it can’t be that disappointing. “But it’s got nothing on a half-decent forest.”

And, well, Callum’s only ever lived in big cities, so he can’t really judge. “You have a lot of those where you live, don’t you?”

Rayla nods. “Runaan and I go hiking all the time. Once you’ve seen a sunrise from the peak of the tallest mountain for miles . . . nothing else really compares.”

It sounds beautiful. “I’d like to see that someday,” Callum says quietly. “If I ever get the chance.”

“Oh, you’ll get the chance,” she says, and Callum turns to look at her. “What? You want to be in Glasgow for university, right? And even if you don’t make it, you’ve got to come visit me sometime. It’d be a tragedy if we never saw each other again after this.”

The reminder that she’s leaving soon only makes his stomach twist. “Of course I’ll visit you,” he promises. “Not seeing you again _would_ be a tragedy. A huge one.”

Rayla lets out a sigh. “You know,” she says, “none of this was in the plan. I wasn’t supposed to go off and make a new best friend in America. What am I going to do with myself now?”

“Not forget me, I hope,” Callum says, and Rayla slaps him lightly on the shoulder.

“As if I could, dummy.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Callum shrugs, “none of this was in my plan, either. Hell, I only met you in the first place because Claudia’s bad at scheduling and I didn’t want to refuse her a favor. But, um. I’m glad things happened the way they did. You’re a good friend, Rayla.”

“So are you, Callum.”

He lets the silence hang over them as they watch the city lights twinkle in the distance, but eventually he feels his eyelids start to droop, and he knows he should probably get home. “Uh, Rayla,” he mutters, “is it a bad time to mention that I have no idea how to get down?”

It turns out to be much easier than Callum anticipated, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t panic every time his grip on the wall slips the tiniest bit. He’s almost to the ground when—overconfident—he lets go of a handhold before solidifying his balance and goes tumbling to the ground.

It’s less than a three-foot fall, but Rayla laughs at him anyway. She helps him to his feet, he dusts off his jacket, and they manage to depart Katolis without another mishap.

If the streetlights feel brighter than they did before, he’s sure it’s only because they’re increasing in power as the night rolls on around them.

* * *

The next few days of school are hell.

Callum’s lack of sleep finally catches up to him, and despite his attempts at adhering to his coma plan, it turns out that Bait is sick and Ezran needs a ride to the vet, which Callum is more than happy to provide. Or would be, under ordinary circumstances.

“Don’t worry, Ez,” he tells his brother as he starts Zym. “I’m sure Bait will be perfectly fine.” And, despite Ezran’s apprehension, he is—the vet gives Bait a thorough examination and tells Ezran exactly how he needs to adjust the toad’s diet, which involves a trip to the pet store afterwards so that Ez can grab everything he needs in one trip.

Callum takes a three-hour nap as soon as they arrive at home, but it just isn’t the same. He wakes up at just before four, and wanders downstairs to find Claudia at the coffee machine and Soren lounging on the couch in the living room.

“Hey, guys,” he says as he tries to rub the sleep from his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“What are we doing here,” Soren snorts. “I haven’t seen you in weeks, and you greet me with a measly ‘what are you doing here’?”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that,” Callum grumbles. “I’m always happy to see you.” He pauses. “But—what _are_ you doing here?”

“Dad needs to discuss some business things with Harrow,” Claudia says from the kitchen. “One thing led to another, and now we’re all here for dinner.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe I’m losing four hours of study time tonight. Four _hours_ , Callum!”

He’s pretty sure Claudia will be fine regardless—AP tests are still a few weeks out, after all—so he doesn’t feel the least bit guilty when he ignores her complaints and says, “Wait, all of you? Is Rayla here, too?”

“She’s around,” Soren shrugs. “I think she went to find Ezran and his toad when Claudia started on her third cup of coffee.”

“It’s _good_ , Soren, quit bugging me about it.”

The two siblings continue their bickering, and Callum wants nothing more than to run back upstairs to find Rayla and Ez, but it would be rude to leave guests alone in the living room. He wonders where Harrow and Viren are.

“So, Soren,” Callum says as soon as he can get a word in between their argument. “How’s life in the finance business?”

“Pretty good, generally,” his friend says with his usual smile. “Just some . . . minor hang ups, here and there. Making deals with people I’m not particularly fond of.” He blanches. “Probably shouldn’t have said that.”

Oh, right—Callum remembers Rayla complaining about that. It’s probably why Soren’s not . . . wherever Viren and Harrow are right now, since he’s not exactly known for being a silent opposition.

“I’m just enjoying the fact that both of them are gone at the same time now,” Claudia remarks. “I get the house all to myself. Except for Rayla, but she’s only here for a month.”

“I’d stay longer,” says a voice from the top of the stairs, “but Runaan would probably die of loneliness before I got back.”

“Rayla!” Callum grins. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Soren mimics, off to the side. “What are Claudia and I, chopped liver?”

“Hey, I said I was happy to see you,” Callum protests.

Soren huffs. “Yeah, after you demanded to know what we were doing in your house.”

“Be nice to your friends, Callum.” Rayla descends the staircase and joins him in the kitchen doorway, giving him a friendly poke in the side. “It’s only polite, after all.”

“I _was_ being nice,” he complains, poking her back in argument. “Soren’s just starved for attention.”

Claudia snorts, but Soren doesn’t object like Callum expects him to. When he looks at him, he’s glancing between Callum and Rayla, confused.

“Soren?”

Realizing he’s been spotted, Soren freezes and tries to school his expression. “When did you two get so . . . chummy?”

“Oh, I don’t know, somewhere in the last two weeks,” Rayla deadpans. Callum bursts out laughing, but the other two don’t react beyond sighing in exasperation. “Seriously, what’s it to you?”

“Nothing,” Soren says with a shrug. “Callum doesn’t usually get along with people so quickly, you know. A guy can get suspicious.”

Callum expects her to laugh—or, failing that, to simply brush it off and move on. He’s _not_ expecting her to narrow her eyes and snap, “Suspicious of what, exactly?”

Soren actually flinches, which is an impressive accomplishment on Rayla’s part and also somewhat concerning, but he regains his composure quickly. “Oh, you know,” he says. “You could be—”

“Rayla,” Callum says loudly, because he knows what’s coming and would rather spare all of them the conversation, “has discovered that the key to my affections is being able to talk to Ezran. The fact that most people aren’t capable of that is just their own fault.”

“Speaking of which,” Rayla adds, eyeing Callum gratefully, “Callum, Ez sent me down to look for you. He wants to show you something.”

Callum perks up immediately. “Oh what is it? Wait, don’t tell me, I’d rather be surprised.” He turns to the others. “Will you two be fine down here?”

“I’m always fine when I have my one true love by my side,” Claudia sighs over-dramatically. Soren just rolls his eyes and nods.

“I’ll rein her in if she goes overboard with the coffee,” he promises, but Callum is already halfway up the stairs, with Rayla just behind him.

“Thanks for that,” she says as they head down the second-story hall toward Ezran’s room. “Soren’s been a wee bit obnoxious these past couple days.”

“Oh?” Callum frowns. “He’s not being mean to you, is he?”

“Nah, nothing like that,” she says. “I think he's caught on to the fact that I'm sneaking out at night, though. He’s been making comments about it in the mornings.”

That, unfortunately, sounds like exactly the sort of thing Soren would do. “If it's bothering you, just tell him to stop. Firmly. Soren’s usually pretty good at respecting boundaries.”

Rayla just shrugs, so Callum lets the topic drop as the enter Ezran’s room. “Callum!” Ez shouts as they walk in. “Look at this!”

He's not entirely sure what _it_ is. “Look at what, Ezran?”

“ _This_ ,” says his brother, gesturing excitedly at Bait’s terrarium, where the toad is hopping around with a vigor Callum, in his sleep-deprived state, almost envies.

“He’s better already?” Callum says. “It’s been, like, four hours.”

“Yep,” Ezran replies. “Personally, I think he was faking it because he wanted the more expensive food. And now that we have it, he doesn’t have to act sick anymore.”

Callum’s not exactly certain that Bait can tell the difference between the two—toad food is toad food, after all, and he’s been eating the same thing since Ezran got him four years ago—but he just smiles fondly at the terrarium. “Smart toad, he is.”

“Smart _and_ crafty,” Ezran says. “He’s been hiding it, though. He still won’t do the maze, not even when there’s food on the other side.”

“Maybe that’s because he knows he’ll get fed regardless,” Rayla suggests, joining Ezran on the floor. “It’s not as if you’re going to starve the wee fellow.”

“You’re right,” Ezran frowns. “I can’t take away his food . . . but I can give him more! Bait, you hear that? If you finish the maze next time, you’ll get _extra_ food for a week.”

Bait just croaks and continues his hopping, unruffled. Ezran pouts.

“He’ll get it eventually, Ez,” Callum assures his brother. “You just have to find the right motivation for him.”

“But I don’t know what he wants,” he complains. “Bait’s mind works in mysterious ways, you know.”

Rayla snorts. “Well, duh, he’s a frog—”

“ _Toad_ ,” Callum and Ezran say at the same time. Ezran shoots a look at the terrarium. “You can’t call him a frog, Rayla. He won’t like you if you do that, and if you can’t be friends with Bait then you can’t be friends with me.”

“And if you can’t be friends with Ez,” Callum echoes, smirking “you can’t be friends with me. Be nice to the toad, Rayla.”

She rolls her eyes at the two of them. “You’re adorable, both of you,” she says. When she spots Callum grinning fondly, she narrows her eyes and adds, “Ezran’s cuter than you, though.”

“You’ll get no arguments from me,” Callum shrugs. “I’m perfectly okay with taking second place in that.”

“Third, you mean.”

“Third? What are you—”

“Bait is second, obviously,” she says, the ghost of a smile playing at her lips. “You still fine with my judgment?”

She’s baiting him, but Callum takes it anyway. “You take that back,” he says. “I’m not losing a cuteness competition to a _toad_.”

“I agree with Rayla,” Ezran says before she can reply. “Bait’s plenty cute, even though he doesn’t think so. Be nice to him.”

“Yeah, Callum,” Rayla cackles, “be nice to the toad.”

Callum flops down onto the floor and groans. “I hate both of you.”

Apparently, he’s unconvincing enough that neither of them even bothers to contradict him.

* * *

“So, Callum,” says Viren, and Callum winces as every eye at the table turns to him. Dinner’s been going so well. “How is your college search going? Claudia tells me you have your eye on a few schools.”

“Oh—yeah, well.” Callum sighs. He should have been expecting the question, really—Viren never misses an opportunity to quiz him on his plans for the future. Apparently ‘having a well-planned trajectory’ is an important part of succeeding in his future life. “A few, I suppose. I don’t really know what I want to do yet, you know?”

Viren nods, like he’s expected as much. “I know the feeling. But still, it’s worth giving a little thought to, here and there. The world doesn’t wait for us individuals to make up our minds.”

“I will,” Callum promises. He thanks his stars that Claudia hasn’t told him about Glasgow School of Art—he’s pretty sure Viren wouldn’t give him more than a sigh and a shake of his head, but the man wields disapproval like a sledgehammer and Callum doesn’t need to be more awkward around him than he already is. “I’ll figure it out.”

“I’m certain you will,” Viren says. “And if you ever have need of advice, just let Claudia or Soren know. I can get you in touch with people.”

Callum’s not entirely sure what advice Viren’s giant financial empire could possibly give him, but he nods anyway. “Thank you,” he says. “I appreciate it.” He doesn’t have any intention of following it up, and he thinks Viren can tell.

When Harrow turns the topic to Claudia’s overstuffed AP schedule (she still looks very much like she’s dying of caffeine overconsumption, so it’s kind of a valid question), Callum excuses himself to the bathroom and practically sprints away.

He spends longer than he should with the door locked, twisting the faucet on and off and watching the little patterns the water makes as it falls. He doesn’t have to go back, he thinks to himself. He can beg off sick (he’s already spent three hours in bed this afternoon, after all) and just hide in his room, away from all of the questions about his future and what the hell he’s planning on doing with his life.

He’s not as effortlessly brilliant as Claudia is, Callum knows, and he’s okay with that. He doesn’t have Soren’s way with people, and he certainly doesn’t have the capacity for the cold-blooded pragmatism that’s served Viren and Harrow so well as business partners. There’s no obvious path for him to take, and that’s . . . kind of scary.

A knock on the door jolts him out of his thoughts. “Uh, just a minute,” he calls, before shutting off the sink and drying his hands. He pulls the door open hurriedly, only to find Rayla frowning at him from the other side.

She takes in his appearance and blinks. “Callum? You all right there?”

“Yeah, of course, I’m fine,” he says. “Everything’s fine.”

Rayla gives him a flat look. “Callum.”

“It’s fine,” he insists, “just feeling a little under the weather. I’ll be all right with a bit of rest.”

“If you’re sure,” she says, giving him an odd look before disappearing into the bathroom. Callum returns to the table, where Ezran is narrating the story of this morning’s visit to the vet, so he deems it safe to stay, even if he does excuse himself again as soon as the meal is over.

He doesn’t think he’s capable of sleeping in this state, but he shuts the door to his room and goes through the motions anyway. Downstairs, everyone is saying their goodbyes, and he thinks he hears a jittery “Hope Callum feels better” from Claudia.

Callum definitely isn’t on as much caffeine as she is, but at this point, he might as well be. He makes his bed three times before he realizes it’s already done, and also that he’s about to sleep in it and erase all of the work he’s done anyway. He lays down on top of the covers as Viren’s car drives off, closes his eyes, and attempts to fall asleep.

It doesn’t work, though he pretends to be unconscious when Harrow comes by and asks (through the door) if he needs any cold medicine. When Callum doesn’t reply, his stepfather sighs and walks off down the hall, probably to tuck Ezran in for the night. He’ll be going to bed early, too; talking business always takes a lot out of Harrow.

Callum gives it thirty minutes before he grabs his phone and his keys, slips out through the darkened hallways, and takes Zym in a beeline straight for Xadia.

* * *

Rayla is standing in front of his studio door when he arrives.

“You’re a terrible liar,” she informs him as he gapes, “and you’re obviously not fine, but if you want to be alone right now, I can leave.”

She doesn’t _want_ to go, but he can tell from her expression that she will if he tells her to, and that more than anything else is what convinces him to shake his head. “No,” he sighs, “no, you can stay. I’m sorry I lied to you.”

She steps aside to let him unlock the door and follows him into the room. “Apology accepted,” she says, “but for real, Callum, what’s wrong? You’re my friend, you know. I want to be here for you.”

“It’s kind of complicated,” Callum mutters, offering her a weak smile. “You sure you want me to drag you into my family drama like this?”

“Please,” she snorts, “I didn’t even ask before pulling you into mine. Drag away, sad artist.”

Callum debates uncovering his easel and talking while he paints, but this conversation probably deserves all of his attention—and his painting of Bait hasn’t been working lately, anyway. He sits next to her and leans up against the wall, contemplating how he should start.

He really needs to get a couple of chairs in here.

“You’ve been here a while,” he says finally. “You’ve seen how Claudia’s family is. And mine, even if it’s a bit less intense. Everyone I know, knows exactly what they’re going to be doing ten, fifteen years down the line. I’m the only one who doesn’t have a clue.”

“Surely not _everyone_?” Rayla asks him. “I’m sure Ezran isn’t certain about what he wants to do yet.”

Callum frowns. “Ezran doesn’t count, he’s still in elementary school.”

“Well, I suppose—”

“And besides,” he adds with a sigh, “he has his heart set on being a veterinary surgeon. Already.”

The two of them fall silent, Rayla deep in thought while Callum scrapes at a patch of paint that’s dried onto the floor. “Callum,” she says after a while, “this may sound a bit stupid, but how do you know you want a path to follow, anyway?”

“I—” he stops, confused. “I mean, it would solve things, right? If I knew what I wanted, if I had a goal to chase, I could just go out and . . . you know, _chase_ it. Without any of this awkward I-don’t-know stuff.”

“You’ve got Glasgow, haven’t you?” she says. “That’s a goal.”

“A dream, more like.” He folds his hands into his lap to keep from scraping his fingernails off on the floor. “And besides, if I did get in, what would I do next? Where could I go with a degree in Fine Art?”

“Is it really all that important, where you go after?” Callum opens his mouth to respond, but she continues over him. “No, Callum listen to me. My whole life, I’ve been looking toward the future. Runaan and I, we’re folks that like to plan, so we do. Extensively. But sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to not have that—to be able to live in the present without worrying about how what I’m doing will affect my life years down the road. To be able to just _be_.”

“You’ve said something like that before,” Callum realizes. “It’s part of why you’re here, isn’t it? A chance to avoid all the planning and just take what comes to you.”

“Exactly,” she nods. “If I’d come here with a plan, or even just a to-do list, nothing would have happened the way it did. I probably wouldn’t even be here right now—I’d be off exploring on my own somewhere, or cooped up in my room doing test prep like Claudia.” She pauses. “When you make plans, Callum, you put limits on the things you can let happen to you.”

“But you’re only talking about a month,” Callum says. “You have plans for the rest of your life, and sure, letting go of them worked out this once, but what if I go into life without a goal and it _doesn’t_ work? How can I find my place in the world if I don’t at least have a direction to look in?”

“What if you do go in with a plan, but decide after a couple years that you don’t like it anymore? What if your place in the world happens to lie in the direction opposite the one you’re looking in?”

“I suppose you’re right,” he concedes. “The possibility of that happening kind of sucks. But even if it does . . . at least I’ll have done something?”

“You’ll have done ‘something’ regardless,” she says. “Plan or no plan, you’ve still got to make some decisions along the way. And making them as you go doesn’t make your life less valid than the people who tried to make them all beforehand.”

“Rayla,” Callum says slowly, “are you actually arguing that it’s okay that I have no idea what I’m doing?”

“I am, because it is.” She scoots closer to him and lays a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe later you’ll have a plan. Or maybe you’ll wake up one day and realize that you like it where you are, even though it’s not something you ever expected.” She hesitates. “I know that’s what meeting you did for me.”

“Hey,” Callum protests weakly, blinking, “don’t get all sappy on me. I’m already about to cry.”

The instant transition from tenderness to horror on Rayla’s face is almost comical. “What—did I—was it something I said?”

“No, no,” he laughs, wiping his eyes with the fabric of his scarf. “People have always told me that finding a path is important, that I’ll be able to do it with enough introspection and soul-searching and whatever. You’re the first person I’ve talked to who doesn’t expect me to just go out and do it.”

Rayla nods. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you did,” she says, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t, either.”

“Yep, that’s me,” Callum grins. “The least surprising person you’ll ever meet.”

“That’s a lie, Callum, and you know it—”

“Seriously, though,” he says, more earnestly this time. “Thank you. I really needed to hear that from someone, I think.” He’ll be back to stressing about this eventually—it’s his future, it’s too big _not_ to stress about—but for tonight, everything is okay. If there’s one thing he can take away from their conversation, it’s the knowledge that no matter what, he’ll have Rayla on his side. Even when he’s not completely sure what that side is.

She smiles at him, and he hopes she knows that he’ll always be on hers, too.

“Hey,” he says suddenly, a thought occurring to him, “can I ask you a question?” Rayla grins wickedly at him, and he realizes his mistake. “Another question, I mean. Not counting that one.”

She smirks, but refrains from mocking him. Callum thinks it’s progress. “Go ahead, Callum.”

“Would it be okay if I painted you?” When she doesn’t answer immediately, he continues, running a hand through his hair, “I mean, you don’t have to say yes. Obviously. I just thought it might be cool, maybe, I dunno. Something for you to have, when you—”

“Slow down, Callum,” Rayla laughs. “Breathe a moment. I’m not going to say no.”

“—oh. Right, okay. Good.”

“I am curious, though,” she says, “you’ve already got drawings of me in your sketchbook. Why ask my permission now?”

Callum shrugs. “Painting is different, I guess. Feels more personal to me. Like, I told you the other day that I could never dream of painting Claudia, because—” He stops, frowns. His mind pulls up the image of Claudia he remembers from mere hours ago—she’s standing in his kitchen in her usual black sweatshirt, holding a cup of coffee to her lips—and starts considering it: the shapes, the colors, the composition. It seems so simple—he _could_ paint that, he thinks. He could do her justice.

But why does he believe that _now_? What’s changed?

“Because of what?” Rayla prompts him, oblivious to Callum’s minor epiphany.

“Nothing,” he mutters. “It’s . . . not important.” He snaps himself out of his reverie by reaching for a paintbrush (careful to _not_ knock anything over this time) and setting up his easel, discarding his half-completed painting of Bait. He’ll finish it eventually. Maybe.

“If you say so, you confused artist.” Rayla follows him to the easel, staying well clear of anything she might be able to knock off-balance. “Do you need me to do anything for you? Pose, or whatnot?”

“Oh, no, that’s okay,” he says quickly. “Eidetic memory, remember? And I usually like doing scenes anyway.” He gestures to his art wall before remembering that nearly half of it is portraits of Ezran, which doesn’t really help his case. “Besides,” he adds, a little self-consciously, “you’ve done enough for me tonight.”

Rayla doesn’t respond verbally, but she does put a hand on his shoulder, at least until he moves to start sketching. She doesn’t retreat to her corner like she normally does, though—she watches with interest as the image from his mind starts appearing on the canvas. It’s just a rough sketch for now, but he needs to make sure the proportions are mostly accurate because it’ll make things easier later. Just a little touch here, and there, erase this, add a little that, close his eyes to make sure he’s envisioning it all properly . . .

He’s so caught up in perfecting his work that he doesn’t realize how long he’s been standing with his eyes shut until he feels Rayla poking him in the arm. “Callum? Callum, you there?”

Callum blinks, stars swirling in his vision, and stumbles backward. “Uh—yeah, I’m here.” He shakes his head to clear it. “Where was I? Oh, right—”

“Callum,” Rayla says gently, “I’ve been trying to get your attention for over a minute now. I think you might’ve fallen asleep standing.”

He opens his mouth to argue, but considering the way his head is refusing to clear away the fuzziness, she might be right. How long has he been at this?

“It’s midnight now,” Rayla says, and he realizes he’s spoken aloud. “I’m not certain when you started, exactly.”

“Midnight,” Callum mutters. Well, he’s nearly finished outlining, so he supposes he can take a break. He stumbles over to the nearest wall, and Rayla follows him nervously. “I’m just going to rest my eyes a bit,” he says as he sits; he _really_ needs a comfy chair or two. Or a couch.

Wordlessly, Rayla sits down next to him, and he rests his head on her shoulder without a complaint from her. He feels . . . drained, for some reason, like he’d be shaking uncontrollably if his body had just a little more energy to spare. Just a short break, he tells himself, long enough to clear his head and slow his heart rate down. He closes his eyes and tries to regulate his breathing, inhaling and exhaling to the counts in his head.

Unfortunately for him, it works a little _too_ well.

* * *

Callum doesn’t think he’s woken up to the sound of someone cursing before. It would be a novel experience, if only could figure out _why_ it’s happening.

“ _Shit_ ,” Rayla’s voice hisses as she shakes him violently. “Callum, wake _up_ , it’s seven in the goddamn morning and we’ve been here _all night_ and—”

Oh. That’s why.

Callum jerks his eyes open and struggles to sit up. Rayla’s crouched in front of him, panicked, holding her phone in one hand and shaking him with the other. “Callum!”

“What— _seven_?” he groans. “What happened? Did we fall asleep?”

“Obviously, you dummy,” she scoffs, but the urgency in her tone leeches all of the humor out of it. “You’ve got to get on home. And I should, too.”

“Right.” Callum pulls himself to his feet and feels around in his pocket for Zym’s keys. He has them, thank God, but there’s a good chance Harrow is awake already . . .

He won’t think about it. Not yet.

“Sorry I can’t drive you home,” he says to Rayla, but she’s too busy ushering him out the door to reply immediately.

“That’s fine, just get home, I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, practically shoving him at the door of his car. And then she’s gone, sprinting down the street toward Claudia’s.

She’ll be fine, he thinks. Soren is the only morning person in that household, especially on Sundays, and he’s probably off on his run already. Callum is the one who should be worried.

“It’ll be fine,” he mutters to himself. “Maybe he’s not up yet. And even if he is, he might not notice you’re gone.”

Callum’s never considered himself very convincing.

He breaks more than one speed limit as he races back across town, but hey, it’s seven AM on a Sunday, who’s going to arrest him? The house looms ominously above him as he leaps out of Zym and hurries inside, tossing his keys blindly in the general direction of the shelf and bolting for the stairs—a route with unfortunately takes him directly past the dining room.

“Callum.” Harrow’s voice is exhausted. Callum turns, slowly, to see his stepfather sitting at the table, his head in his hands. Ezran stands next to him, eyes wide, clutching Bait like the toad is his lifeline.

“Uh. Hi,” Callum says, trying for a grin. “Nice morning we’re having, isn’t it?”

He can practically feel Harrow’s sigh. _Of all the things you could have gone with . . ._

“Look, Callum,” Harrow says, He’s modulating his tone, forcing the words to come quickly and evenly. Ezran calls it his ‘business voice’. “I know I’m not your birth father, and that can make things difficult sometimes. But I want you to know that you can talk to me, okay? You can tell me the truth about what you’re doing..

“Ezran’s told me where you were—don’t blame him for that, mind you; I was going to call the police, and his explanation was the only thing that stopped me. I think it’s good that you’re following your dreams, Callum, really. I just wish—” he swallows, and Callum sees his composure flicker, if only for a moment “—I wish you felt like you could tell me about these things. I want to support you, Callum.”

He’s planned this speech, Callum can tell. Holding back his emotions behind a wall of professionalism, addressing what he knows Callum’s immediate concerns would be—he can’t be mad at Ezran, of course, that would be ridiculous—and guiding the conversation in the ways Harrow wants it to go. This will end the way their conversations always do: with one or both of them walking away in frustration, unwilling to escalate the conflict even further and risk losing their composure. And they’ll go on walking their circles around each other until the day they just don’t talk anymore.

Callum’s had enough of that.

“I was with Rayla,” he blurts, if only because he knows it isn’t what Harrow expects him to say. “We were both at Xadia, together.” He feels a little bad about what he’s implying, but he needs to derail the conversation, shock the room just enough so that—

Harrow twitches like Callum’s just hooked him up to an electrical socket, but before he can even blink, his stepfather’s expression is schooled and inscrutable once more. “Whatever you’re up to, Callum,” Harrow says slowly, “I trust that you know what you’re doing, and that you’re being responsible about—”

“ _No_ ,” Callum growls, and before he knows what he’s doing, he’s stepped up to the dining table, his fists clenched at his sides. “No, Harrow, you _shouldn’t_ trust me, because when have I ever given you a reason to? You should be angry with me. You should be shouting your head off at me right now, because that’s what fathers do when their sons disappear unexplained for an entire night! Isn’t it?” He laughs, or tries to; it comes out as more of a choked cough. “They don’t put up these high-and-mighty walls of— _whatever_ you have going on! They don’t pretend to be okay with things they _aren’t_ okay with! They react like _humans_ , with _emotions_ , they don’t—they just—” He cuts off, breathing heavily, and stares at the floor. What is he doing? Getting mad at Harrow isn’t going to solve any of this.

He turns on his heel to go.

“Callum, wait,” Harrow says from behind him, and for the first time in what feels like months, Callum hears actual emotion in his voice. “Please—please don’t leave.”

He turns around slowly, but he’s still in time to watch Harrow wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. “I am angry,” his stepfather mutters hoarsely, “but I—I didn’t want to give us a reason to to drift even further apart.” He takes a deep breath, but when he continues, the mask still hasn’t come back. “Callum, I know I’m not your birth father. I’ve never wanted to replace him, and maybe—maybe that’s made me a little distant sometimes, because I don’t want you to think I’m trying to. But you’re still my son—stepson, I mean, if you prefer, and I suppose . . . well, I suppose I haven’t always been fair in the ways I’ve tried to show it to you.”

Drained, Callum collapses into the chair opposite Harrow. Ezran’s disappeared somewhere, he notices, but Callum doesn’t blame him. “I . . . haven’t really been fair to you either,” he admits. “I guess—for a while, I thought your distance meant you didn’t care, and that I shouldn’t care either. But that’s a cycle, isn’t it? We both went on assuming the other didn’t care even when . . .” he swallows. “Even when it was obvious that we did.”

Harrow looks at him from across the table, and surprisingly, Callum finds himself able to meet his eyes. “No more buried resentment?” his stepfather says cautiously.

“No more buried resentment,” Callum agrees. It’s not going to be perfect immediately—nothing ever is, after all—but an image pops into his head of his family, back when Mom was alive, eating dinner around the table and laughing with each other. They can have that again, or a version of it. It’s not too late. “From now on, we’ll talk to each other. Like people do.”

“Yes,” Harrow muses, “like people do.” He pauses, then leans forward, toward Callum. “This may be a little soon, but I can’t say I’m not curious—you said Rayla was with you last night?”

Callum chokes on his own saliva. “Uh—no—well, yes, but no, it’s not like that. She was there, but we didn’t—we’re not—”

“Take your time,” says Harrow, raising an eyebrow.

“She was just watching me paint,” Callum says. “I was just trying to get you to react to something, I guess. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

“I see.” Harrow doesn’t look entirely convinced, but Callum lets it be. This is definitely a topic they don’t need to discuss right now. Harrow’s offered him an olive branch, talking to him like this in the first place, and Callum wants to offer one in return—but his friendship with Rayla is a bit personal for that.

Instead, he says, “Hey, do you maybe . . . want to come by Xadia and see what I’ve been working on? I can show you around my studio, if you’d like.”

“I’d love that, actually,” Harrow says. “As long as you’re comfortable with it, of course.”

“I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t.” He’s still cautious, a little bit, but talking to Harrow now is nowhere close to the level of uncomfortable that it would have been less than an hour ago.

Suddenly, the house doesn’t seem quite so empty after all.

* * *

Some things don’t change, of course. He still finds himself at Xadia painting late into the night—old habits die hard, he supposes—but now that Harrow knows where he is, sneaking out is a lot less of an issue. He’s even borrowed a pair of chairs from one of the guest rooms, so that there’s finally somewhere to sit inside his studio.

“These are new,” Rayla remarks the first time she sees them, just under a week since their accidental sleepover. “Got tired of sleeping on the floor, then?”

Callum rolls his eyes and flicks a droplet of water at her, which she blocks— _actually_ blocks—with her arm, laughing. “They’re for guests, Rayla,” he says. “Well, one guest, since that’s all I seem to get around here.”

“Aw, I’m honored.” She curls up in one of the seats like some sort of cat and watches as he returns to his work. “How’s your painting coming along?”

“Slower than I’d hoped.” He can’t seem to get the details right; he’s never painted a streetlamp before, and the exact way the light shimmers in his memory continues to elude him. “I’m not sure I’ll be done with it before you leave for Glasgow,” he admits.

“Send me a print,” Rayla shrugs, seemingly unbothered, “or if you’re not coming to visit before July, tell Claudia to bring it to me. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

Callum thinks _he’d_ mind, though. Paintings like this are . . . personal. He wants to give it to her himself.

“Speaking of that, actually,” he says, “we’re touring a bunch of colleges this summer—Harrow, Ez, and I, that is. And Glasgow is on the list.”

“Well, you’d better pay me a visit, then,” she says, grinning excitedly. “When are you planning on being there?”

He shrugs. “Sometime in late June, we’re not sure yet. I wanted to ask if you were going to be in town.”

“For you, of course I’ll be,” she replies, and Callum grins.

“Sap.”

“Oh, don’t you start,” she says, levelling a glare at him. “You’ve said far worse, and you and I both know it.”

And well, he supposes he has, so he doesn’t press the point. They’ve grown strangely familiar with each other’s presence, so much so that Callum feels more off-balance when Rayla _isn’t_ by his side than when she is. And she’s expressed the same feeling about him—at least, that’s how he’s choosing to interpret her complaints about having to find someone new at home to make fun of.

According to Rayla, she’s never met quite as easy of a target as Callum is. He’s not sure whether to feel honored or offended, so he ends up in between the two, somewhere around _amused_.

Callum’s gotten used to her being here, is the point. He’s a little afraid of what things will be like once she’s gone.

“You’re strangely quiet tonight,” Rayla says after a while. “Something on your mind?”

“A little,” Callum shrugs. “Well, mostly the painting. But also just,” he gestures vaguely with his paintbrush, “thinking about the future.”

“Mm,” Rayla hums. She extracts herself from her chair to walk over to Callum, poking him in the side as she approaches. “What concerns you about the future, worried artist?”

Out of instinct more than anything else, he wraps an arm around her in a half-hug, but Rayla doesn't object. “I'm going to miss you,” he admits. “It won't be the same without you here.”

“It'll be quieter, that's for certain.” She pokes him hard enough that he yelps and lets go, but the next moment she's leaning her head on his shoulder again. “You're losing the main source of excitement in your life.”

“My life is plenty exciting,” Callum retorts, frowning. “We went on an adventure together, remember?”

“Oh, and do you go on adventures alone when I'm not here?”

Well. She has him there, he supposes.

“Fine,” he grumbles, “I'll add ‘less exciting’ to my list of descriptions of life without Rayla. Happy?”

“That would depend on the rest of your list,” she says, arching an eyebrow at him. “So go on, let's hear it.”

“No way,” he says. “I refuse. You're just going to use it as material to make fun of me with.”

She smirks. “I'd make fun of you regardless, but fine, how about a deal? You give me your list, and I'll give you my descriptions of life without Callum. Then we’ll be even.”

Callum doesn't trust this deal, not remotely. “Okay,” he says slowly, “but only if you go first.”

“Fine,” Rayla says with an exaggerated sigh. She pulls away from him so they can face each other and starts, “One: it's going to be quite a bit more lonely.”

He must look pretty surprised, because Rayla punches him lightly on the arm and scoffs, “Come on, Callum, don't act like this is some sort of shocking revelation.”

“No—I mean, it's not,” he says quickly. “I just assumed you were going to take this opportunity to mercilessly mock me about the parts of me you _won't_ miss.”

“I’ve got to be sincere some of the time, dummy,” she laughs, rolling her eyes at him. “But I could switch to doing that, if you want.”

“Don't you dare,” Callum grins. “Sentimental Rayla is one of my favorites.”

“And Sentimental Callum is sappy as hell,” she retorts, but she's grinning, too. “Fine, then. Your turn.”

“I thought you were going to give me your list first?”

“What kind of deal would that be?” Rayla asks, narrowing her eyes at him. “No, you only get my list once I know you're giving me yours.”

“How cunning of you,” Callum mutters dryly. “Well, if you must know, I'll probably have to get rid of one of these chairs once you're gone. I don't need two of them for myself.”

“That doesn’t count,” she complains. “I want to hear more about your life than your interior design choices, Callum.”

“Hey, these interior design choices are a huge part of my life,” he argues. “This sudio means a lot to me, and so does the way I decorate it.”

Rayla considers him for a moment. “Don't get rid of my chair, then.”

“What do you mean?” he frowns. “Why not?”

“Leave it here,” she says. “As a reminder that I'll be back someday. And who knows, maybe other people’ll want to start visiting you. You'd be a terrible host if you didn't have a place for them to sit.”

“I only need two chairs if I'm also planning on sitting in one,” Callum points out, but he's pretty sure he'll end up keeping two anyway. If only because Rayla wants him to. “But I suppose it'd be a waste to get rid of them so soon.”

“Good,” says Rayla firmly. She retreats back into her chair again, and Callum gives up painting for the night and settles into his. He can paint any time he wants, but he only has so many more chances to enjoy Rayla’s company.

Really, he'd be lying if he said that wasn't why he brought in the second chair.

* * *

The next week passes more quickly than any seven-day span that Callum’s ever experienced, which is as infuriating as it is unsurprising. By the time Friday night rolls around, he could swear that he was just meeting her yesterday.

It's three in the morning on the night before Rayla is due to leave, and he just can't seem to fall asleep.

He's tired enough that heading back to Xadia isn't an option (he's not confident in his ability to drive without crashing Zym) and besides, he and Rayla parted ways in front of the studio over an hour ago. Even if he does drag himself out of bed again, she won't be there waiting for him, and Callum is fooling no one if he claims that wouldn't be his reason for leaving the house again. He misses her already, and she isn't even gone yet.

Callum reaches for his phone to tell her as much, but she's probably sleeping by now, and she needs the rest before her trip home. Transatlantic flights are no joke, after all. He puts the phone down without unlocking it and burrows back into his blankets, then tosses all of them away when the weight immediately feels like too much.

Sleep continues to elude him.

“Get a grip, Callum,” he mutters to himself. “It's not like you’re never going to see her again.” Hell, they have concrete plans to meet up over the summer, and they've both made promises to visit each other even after that. Seeing Rayla again is practically a guarantee—so why, he wonders, does he feel like some giant hand is crushing his lungs together to keep him from breathing? He hasn't felt like this since . . .

Actually, he can't remember _ever_ feeling like this before, and he'd be perfectly happy if he never experienced anything like it again. It's not a panic attack, he can tell that much, but more of an intense, suffocating sort of dread. He’s not sure if that's really any better.

The worst part is, he knows exactly how to make it go away: call Rayla. She’ll be able to talk him through it, or let him talk himself through it, or distract him with some sort of conversation. Honestly, just hearing her voice would probably be enough to calm him down.

Callum grits his teeth and buries his face in his pillow. He's going to have _problems_ once Rayla’s gone—he's gotten too used to her continued presence here.

He's never had a best friend move away before, he realizes. If he's being honest with himself, he's never had a best friend on the same level as Rayla. He doesn't know what he's going to do without her.

Maybe that's what scares him.

Things can't go back to the way they were, and Callum is more than aware of that fact. For the most part, he's glad about it, because his relationship with Harrow seems to finally be on the mend and his ill-advised crush on Claudia has somehow faded back into nonexistence. (It's taken a lot of soul-searching over the past week, but he's pretty sure it's actually gone. Callum wonders if all crushes are this easy to get rid of, and if so, what the secret is. He's not sure he has the answer to either of those questions.)

On the other hand, he's gone through all of these changes with Rayla by his side. She's part of this new life of his, and her departure _will_ rock the boat significantly, but he supposes he wouldn't have it any other way.

He does tell her this, in the form of a several-paragraph-long text message, which he sends alongside a “Sorry if this woke you up, but I just had to say something”. Once he tosses his phone away and his heart stops beating quite so quickly, Callum finally feels calm enough to fall asleep.

* * *

**Rayla:** Oi

 **Rayla:** Sappy artist

 **Rayla:** I'm going to miss you too, dummy, but we're not saying goodbye yet

 **Callum:** What do you mean

 **Rayla:** You're driving us to the airport

 **Rayla:** If you want to, I mean

 **Callum:** Wait

 **Rayla:** If you're busy or something we can just have Claudia do it

 **Callum:** Why didn't you tell me this before

 **Callum:** I’d have waited another day before spilling my guts to you

 **Callum:**...

 **Callum:** Of course I'll drive you to the airport

* * *

Callum shows up to Viren’s almost fifteen minutes late, much to Rayla’s amusement. “If I didn’t know any better,” she says as she climbs into his car, “I’d say you’re trying to make me miss my flight.”

“Maybe I am,” he replies, then frowns. “Though I’m not sure what good that would do me. You’d just be able to hop on the next one.”

Claudia gives him an irritated look from the backseat, where she’s been forced into on account of Rayla taking the front. Callum feels a little bad about that, but he figures she can have the front seat on the way back. “Just drive, Callum. Let’s try not to find out if that’s possible.”

He’s pretty sure it is, but he shifts Zym into gear and takes off down the street anyway. Luckily, traffic turns out to be lighter than expected, so they pull into the airport just five minutes past their planned arrival time.

If his and Rayla’s snail-like pace as they walk through the parking lot delays them a further five minutes, well, it is what it is.

“Come _on_ , slowpokes,” Claudia calls from where she’s waiting for them at the terminal doors. “What, are you suddenly eighty years old or something?”

Callum exchanges a look with Rayla, but they both hurry forward to meet her. Neither of them has said a word since they exited Zym, and Callum is almost afraid to break the silence. Some irrational part of him is afraid it would make this that much more real.

Their pace slackens and stalls before they make it halfway to the doors.

“Ugh, I am _not_ dealing with this right now,” Claudia grumbles, and before Callum realizes what’s happening she has one hand on his arm and another on Rayla’s, and she’s dragging them both toward the terminal despite their attempts to shake her off. “I get it, you two are going to miss each other. But we have a schedule to adhere to.”

“Actually,” Rayla says, jerking herself out of Claudia’s grasp, “I was trying to find a moment of privacy with Callum, something you’re most assuredly not helping with.”

Claudia just sighs. “You can have your moment once we know you’re not going to miss your flight.” She lets go of Callum once they’re through the entrance. He winces and rubs at his upper arm. “Soren claims the TSA lines are always a nightmare, and we’re already running late.”

That’s kind of fair, Callum thinks—airport security isn’t the best, but at the same time, Soren is the exact combination of hates-standing-still and loves-to-complain that would exaggerate that sort of thing out of habit. It probably isn’t going to take Rayla more than an hour to get through the security line.

( _Probably_ , of course, isn’t _definitely_ , and the line turns out to be much, much longer than Callum expected for a Saturday afternoon. Suddenly, he understands the source of Claudia’s anxiety.)

“This is unfortunate,” Rayla says, eyeing the sea of people in front of them. “I’ll be lucky if I have time to sit down at the gate after this.”

“Exactly.” Claudia tosses her hair and looks at the two of them. “Never underestimate waiting times at an airport, I always like to say.”

As would-be proverbs go, it needs work, but Callum refrains from commenting. She is right, after all.

“Go on, then,” he says to Rayla. Despite his tardiness, he really doesn’t want her to miss her flight. “You’ll see me in a couple months, don’t worry.”

“I know,” she grumbles. “That doesn’t make this any easier.”

She doesn’t show any signs of wanting to move, so Callum gives her a gentle nudge toward the security line. “Rayla. You can’t stand there forever.”

Rayla blinks at him, like he’s just snapped her out of a trance. “Right,” she says. “Of course. Promise I’ll see you?”

“Third week of June,” he nods. “Promise.”

“Good.” She gives him a quick hug and nods to Claudia, who just rolls her eyes at the two of them. And then she’s gone, disappeared into the massive labyrinth of airport patrons. Callum lets out a long breath and blinks, trying to reset himself.

“Third week of June,” Claudia snorts. “I’m going to see her, too, but did she ask me about that? No, she did not.” She’s grinning, though, so Callum determines she’s joking and ignores the jibe. Claudia doesn’t seem particularly disconcerted.

As they’re walking back through the parking lot, he determines that he hates quick goodbyes. But then again, he’s not sure a long one would really be any better.

* * *

It’s almost ironic that Rayla’s departure is _more_ life-altering than Callum’s reconciliation with Harrow, considering that he’s only known her for a month and the other has practically been years in the making. He feels a little guilty about it, sometimes.

He’s lost track of the number of times he’s glanced up at the door of his Xadian studio, wondering when Rayla is going to burst in for the night, before remembering that she can’t do that anymore. (Sometimes she calls him, and he sets his phone down on her chair, but it’s not the same.) Whenever he mutters something especially dumb in the middle of class, he can’t help but miss her snarky responses. Lunch with only him and Claudia is . . . not _awkward_ , but more subdued than it used to be.

He feels significantly off-balance, to sum it up gently.

Before he can get _too_ out of sorts, luckily, he’s getting mobbed with finals and end-of-junior-year visits from the school college counselors, neither of which leave much time for thinking about anything else. He makes it through the semester with a smattering of passing grades (having forsaken Xadia entirely for the final two weeks of the school year), and as soon as finals are over, he pours himself into marathon painting sessions in an attempt to round out his portfolio for college applications.

If he didn’t have so much work to do, he’d probably go insane from the waiting. As it is, he thinks he still will, just for different reasons than expected.

By the time the second week of June rolls around, Harrow has to physically drag him away from his canvas to make time to pack. By the time the third week arrives and boarding passes are printed, he wouldn’t be able to get Callum back _into_ the studio if it killed both of them.

Even Ezran’s nonstop chatter can’t calm Callum down during the drive to the airport (or, indeed, the entire flight to Scotland), though he does spare a few moments to reassure his brother that Bait will be okay with the petsitter they’ve hired. (“I _know_ he’ll be fine, Callum”—“Okay, you just said you were worried and I wanted to make sure”—“ _Callum._ ”)

Despite numerous attempts, he doesn’t fall asleep for the entire seven-hour flight, which he’s pretty sure he’ll regret within short order. But it’s not like there’s anything he can do about it.

He manages to reign himself in as they’re walking up the gangway into the airport proper—he’s in a foreign country for the first time, after all, and that’s a little awe-inducing no matter the circumstances. Though he’s not a huge fan of the Glasgow airport architecture.

The moment he spots Rayla amidst the milling crowd, all of his composure vanishes.

Callum isn’t sure which of them starts running first, but they end up meeting each other in a tight embrace halfway between their two exasperated families. “I missed you,” he mutters into her shoulder, as soon as he can breathe again.

“I can tell,” Rayla laughs, but a moment later, she relents. “I missed you too, dummy.”

He doesn’t reply aside from squeezing her tighter.

“Hey,” Rayla says as they pull apart, “Guess what?” Callum is a little suspicious of the way she’s grinning, but he decides to indulge her anyway.

“What?”

“We’re in Scotland now,” she says triumphantly, “which means _you’re_ the one with the accent.”

Callum narrows his eyes at her. “You’ve been waiting a whole month and a half to say that, haven’t you?”

“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t,” she says, but her smirk tells Callum she has been. Rayla grabs his hand and starts dragging him through the crowd. “Come on, I need to introduce you to Runaan. Properly, this time.”

Motioning for Ezran and Harrow to join them, Callum laces his fingers into Rayla’s and runs after her, following her lead.

* * *

_Fin._


End file.
